Art and drugs have a history that stretches back millennia. But when it comes to modern and contemporary approaches, science, technology and concept have broadened the horizons for artists making drugs their subject. Scroll through the gallery to discover some of the most beautiful and notorious works influenced by the world of narcotics.
Pictured: "Cosmic Cavern" (2015) by Kenny Scharf.
Pictured: "Cosmic Cavern" (2015) by Kenny Scharf.
Kenny Scharf, "Closets" series (1981-) —
Pop surrealist Kenny Scharf built the first of his "Closets" in New York, 1981 in a loft he shared with Keith Haring. "I made it as a place to go and trip," he explains, recalling a period "when I was really into mushrooms -- doing them maybe once a week." Scharf's "safe space" evolved, becoming a cathedral of Day-Glo bricolage, with over 30 iterations in four decades, from LA to Tokyo. His latest offerings, the Cosmic Cavern at the Portland Art Museum and the Nassau County Museum of Art, show Scharf's desire to cram as much psychedelic goodness into one space as possible is anything but diminished.
Diddo, "Ecce Animal" (2013) —
"Ecce Animal" by Dutch artist Diddo is not your usual skull. Sculpted from gelatine and compressed cocaine, the powder was all sourced from the street and rigorously tested in a lab for its purity -- only around 15-20% once 'cutting agents' including caffeine and paracetamol were accounted for. The sculpture is a Yorick for Generation X, but not, explains the artist, preoccupied with mortality, nor "intended to be parable on the self-destructiveness of addiction or substance abuse." He says the piece meditates upon the conflict between our civilized societies and the vestiges of our animal instincts. "Cocaine helps relieve the tension between the conflicting forces," Diddo argues. "It complements the intended message."
Damien Hirst, "Standing Alone on the Precipice and Overlooking the Arctic Wastelands of Pure Terror" (1999-2000) —
Britart enfant terrible Hirst has previously stated how his voracious appetite for drugs and alcohol turned him into a "babbling wreck" for a period. Now teetotal, drugs have as been as much of a subject as a stimulant for the artist. Hirst submitted twelve cabinets stacked with containers of medication as part of his thesis at Goldsmith's College of Art, London in 1989, and expanded with "Pharmacy" in 1992, an installation featuring cabinets stacked with pharmaceutical drugs and all the furnishings of a laboratory or hospital. By 2000 the packaging had gone, and with "Standing Alone on the Precipice and Overlooking the Arctic Wastelands of Pure Terror" he presented thousands of resin and plaster "pills". Shown at the Venice Biennale in 2003, Hirst's critics have interpreted the work as a response to Max Beckermann's suggestion that painting -- and perhaps more widely art -- helps in dealing with the "void" of acknowledging our mortality.
Sarah Schoenfeld, "Opium" from "All You Can Feel" (2013) —
For her series "All You Can Feel", Berliner Sarah Schoenfeld bought drugs both legal and illegal and dissolved them in water and alcohol, dropping the chemical solutions on to exposed 35mm film. The result is the beautiful corrosion of the negative in myriad colors and compositions. "The photographic negative is built of four different layers, which are on top of each other," the artist told CNN. "Normally the light waves would touch one of the layers according to their wavelength and 'print' their image on this layer." She describes her method as a different kind of exposure. "If you compare this to taking drugs, you would also eventually 'see' things, which are not caused by light and wavelength of the outer world, but by chemical processes inside your brain and body."
Bryan Lewis Saunders, "Morphine" (1997) —
Tennessee-based artist Bryan Lewis Saunders has created a self-portrait every day since January 30, 1995, but is perhaps best known for his series "Under the Influence", a series of self-portraits created while under the effects of a variety of drugs.
Bryan Lewis Saunders, "Xanax" (2001) —
Saunders never paid for any of the substances -- as wide-ranging as heroin, bath salts and Xanax -- during the course of the series of over 100 self-portraits. In retrospect the artist calls the experiment "self-abuse," saying "I wasn't in the best of places mentally." What's striking about the series is the sheer variety of styles induced by intoxicating experiences. Saunders says in summary that drugs make you look ugly in art, and that "it's very easy to sensationalize it."
Marina Abramović, "Rhythm 2" (1974) —
Before Abramović's magnus opus "Rhythm 0" came "Rhythm 2", a two-part performance piece inspired by her loss of consciousness during "Rhythm 5". Performed at the Gallery of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, the first half of the performance saw Abramović take a drug prescribed for people with catatonia. As a healthy person not afflicted with the muscle immobilizing condition, the artist lost control of her body over 50 minutes, experienced violent spasms while remaining perfectly lucid. When the first drug wore off Abramović ingested a different medication, this time intended for people exhibiting violent, schizophrenic behavior. This time her body remained in control, but the artist became mentally detached from her environment, "forgetting who and where I am," she recalls.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, "Untitled" (1982) —
Warhol protégé Jean-Michel Basquiat died of a heroin overdose aged 27 in 1988, leaving behind a remarkable collection of neo-expressionist art. Basquiat, a friend of Keith Haring, is extremely popular in today's contemporary art market, with "Untitled" (pictured) selling for $57.3 million in May 2016. His former girlfriend in an interview with the BBC in 2010 suggests his art reflects the type of drugs he was using at the time: "little tiny detailed paintings" indicative of cocaine, while large brushstrokes align with his heroin use.
!Mediengruppe Bitnik, "Random Darknet Shopper" (2014) —
Operating out of Zurich and London, art collective !Mediengruppe Bitnik hit headlines in 2014 with "Random Darknet Shopper", a computer program built given bitcoin purchasing power and free reign to buy items from the dark web and have them delivered to Kunst Halle gallery in St Gallen, Switzerland. The shopping bot, stationed within the exhibition space, bought cigarettes and master keys with its $100 weekly allowance, before deciding to throw a party with 10 ecstasy pills. Bought from Germany for $48 and concealed in a DVD case, they were nonetheless put on display.
!Mediengruppe Bitnik, "Random Darknet Shopper" (2014) —
"The motivation for the artwork really came in the light of the Snowden revelations," says collective co-founder Carmen Weisskopf. "For internet artists it meant we had to re-evaluate the networks we work in. We became really interested in looking at these anonymous and encrypted networks from an artistic point of view."
![American artist Tomaselli is a master of collage, weaving pills into his works of acrylic paint and resin. Embedding medication into his work -- "chemical cocktails" as the artist dubs them -- Tomaselli <a href="index.php?page=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jamescohan.com%2Fartists%2Ffred-tomaselli%2F" target="_blank" target="_blank">says</a> "[they] can no longer reach the brain through the bloodstream and must take a different route to altering perception. In my work, they travel to the brain through the eyes." In "Dead Eyed Bird Blast" (1997) pills can be seen in the white dots between the fauna. An avid bird-watcher, Tomaselli has drawn a link between the two, <a href="index.php?page=&url=http%3A%2F%2Famericanart.si.edu%2Fexhibitions%2Fonline%2Fbirds%2Fartists%2Ftomaselli%2Ftomaselli_birdblast.cfm" target="_blank" target="_blank">describing ornithology</a> as "witnessing a parallel universe." ("Dead Eyed Bird Blast" and other works by Fred Tomaselli are currently on display at the <a href="index.php?page=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.toledomuseum.org%2Fexhibitions%2Ffred-tomaselli-birds%2F" target="_blank" target="_blank">Toledo Museum of Art</a>.)](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/160726141231-restricted-fred-tomaselli-birds.jpg?q=w_1600,h_900,x_0,y_0,c_fill/h_447)
Fred Tomaselli, "Dead Eyed Bird Blast" (1997) —
American artist Tomaselli is a master of collage, weaving pills into his works of acrylic paint and resin. Embedding medication into his work -- "chemical cocktails" as the artist dubs them -- Tomaselli says "[they] can no longer reach the brain through the bloodstream and must take a different route to altering perception. In my work, they travel to the brain through the eyes." In "Dead Eyed Bird Blast" (1997) pills can be seen in the white dots between the fauna. An avid bird-watcher, Tomaselli has drawn a link between the two, describing ornithology as "witnessing a parallel universe." ("Dead Eyed Bird Blast" and other works by Fred Tomaselli are currently on display at the Toledo Museum of Art.)
Henri Michaux, "Miserable Miracle" (1957) —
Born in Belgium, 1899, poet and painter Michaux was a teetotaller until mescaline came calling. His writings and drawings in "Miserable Miracle" (1957), an account of his experiments, details the mind expanding and fine motor skill inhibiting effects of the hallucinogen. His drawings show rhythmic scribbles and stippling in fluid -- albeit abstract -- forms, without an obvious subject. Film maker Eric Duvivier adapted Michaux's books in "Images Du Monde Visionnaire", a film attempting to conjure the imagery of Michaux's high. Michaux was unimpressed however, saying to try and recreate the psychedelic experience was "to attempt the impossible."
Vincent Van Gogh, "Portrait of Camille Roulin" (1888) and "Self-portrait with Grey Felt Hat" (1887) —
Why did Van Gogh use so much yellow in his painting? It's well known that the Dutch post-impressionist was partial to absinthe, excessive consumption of which may cause a yellow hue in vision. But clinical professor of pathology Paul Wolf argues that the volume required for this sort of effect is so vast as to be discounted. However, Wolf suggests overmedication of digitalis-- potentially prescribed for Van Gogh's medication -- would give the world a yellow-green tint. Indeed, in one portrait of Van Gogh's physician Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, he can be seen holding a stem of a purple foxglove -- from which digitalis is extracted -- in his hand. Other publications, however, claim that he was not treated with digitalis at all.
Viktor Oliva, "Absinthe Drinker" (1901) —
Czech painter and illustrator Oliva was primarily a graphic artist, but his most famous work is a painting that hangs in Café Slavia, one of his favourite haunts, to this day. Called "Absinthe Drinker", the painting depicts a man accompanied by the Green Fairy, a manifestation of absinthe and its intoxicating allure. The highly-alcoholic drink was popular in bohemian Paris in the late 19th and early 20th century, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Vincent Van Gogh all supping on the green spirit.
