Pay for Your Pleasure, 1988

Pay for Your Pleasure is organized in a dramatic corridor space lined with forty-two banners portraying well-known philosophers, poets, politicians, and artists. Each banner is paired with a quotation from its respective historical figure addressing the relationship between art-making and madness or criminality. Kelley mandated that each venue where the installation is shown must include an artwork made by a violent criminal from the area, as well as a donation box soliciting contributions to local victims’ rights organizations. Pay for Your Pleasure was first installed in a hallway of the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago and featured a clown painting by convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy. In LA, it includes a work by “Freeway Killer” William Bonin. The installation collides the aestheticization of evil or wrongdoing, viewers’ often-uncomfortable reactions to encountering art created by vicious criminals, and the notion of personal or social “payback.”