Marilyn Manson's shock tactics worked again. With art, this time.

Manson, real name Brian Hugh Warner, showed up at the media preview of Trismegistus at 101 Exhibit in Miami's Design District Thursday night. Most, if not all, the works in the collection were of grisly figures and ghostly, often bloody apparitions. But who would expect anything else?

The Goth rocker-turned-painter is taller than he appears in photos and was dressed in head-to-toe black -- from his signature floppy witch's hat to his Herman Munster boots.

''I paint people that I think are interesting,'' he said simply.

We're not sure what crowd he runs with, but some pieces were tough to look at -- like The Man Who Eats His Fingers,a ghostly apparition, mouth bloodied, showing off his missing digits. Others were more tongue in cheek, such as Ready or Not Tot, a creepy baby with werewolf-like lower teeth. Three recent paintings of a blue-eyed mystery woman, ''Isani,'' put the Evan Rachel Wood reconciliation rumors to rest.

''That's my special lady friend,'' said the man who took his stage name from icons Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson. Then, rambling a bit: ''I really don't want to start the next chapter of my life by . . . burdening someone with being the solution to my problems -- or the source of my problems.'' Trismegistus is the name of Manson's 2004 painting of a three-headed Jesus, done on an antique embalming table. ''That one was during a period in my life where I was feeling a bit hopeless. For me it signifies a resurrection and believing in myself,'' he said. ``It's important to me but technically probably not the best art.''

-- MADELEINE MARR

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