The Relationship Between Art and Drugs: An Enduring Chemical Romance

The relationship between art and drugs is fascinating for many people. Art and drugs often find enthusiastic allies in one another. And there’s a prevailing stereotype that artists of all kinds often use drugs to help them create art.

This is not an unfounded assumption. It’s not difficult to imagine how a changed state would directly affect artistic performance. Be it in the form of fine art, music, dance or writing. There is even some scientific evidence to support the idea that drugs promote creativity.

How exactly is the relationship between art and drugs and what does it tell us?

Drugs for art

Probably the most obvious way people engage with the relationship between art and drugs is by using drugs to aid the process of creating art.

This is quite a trope, but the legacy of this practice dates back to the Neanderthals. Some scientists believe that hallucinogens, especially psilocybin mushrooms, played a vital role in helping our ancestors create some of the first documented works of art in human history, namely cave art.

Photo by: Vincent Verroust

One can easily imagine a humble Paleolithic shaman hunting for food in the wild, tripping over psilocybins, and inadvertently tripping over balls. However, scientists believe that it is very likely that our early ancestors knew about the effects of hallucinogens. Some scientists suspect that they were looking for them, among other things, for the process of art creation. Paintings of psilocybin mushrooms found in caves point to this conclusion. Sure, the first trip may be accidental, but all subsequent trips were likely planned.

To this day, different cultures produce shamanic art, especially indigenous cultures. Different groups have their own conventions regarding the process. For example, the Shipibo of Peru uses ayahuasca to induce trance, which inspires the shamanic geometric visions that are believed to contain their own energy. The shaman then interprets the visions and translates them into music known as medicine songs for the purpose of healing.

Beyond shamanic practice, artists have long been very open about their experiences with drug experiments. Andy Warhol particularly liked the diet drug amphetamine Obetrol. He credited him for helping him produce works of art at a relentless pace. There is also speculation that the drug contributed to the repetitive aesthetic and motifs that have become a trademark of Warhol.

One of the most famous anecdotes about the relationship between art and drugs comes from the writer Thomas De Quincy. His autobiography Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is particularly revealing:

Now, by greatly increasing the activity of the mind in general, opium necessarily increases the particular mode of activity by which we can construct elaborate intellectual pleasure from the raw material of organic sound.

Thomas De Quincy

His and his contemporaries’ experiences with opium have led many to theorize that opium is particularly effective as a literary stimulant. The French surrealist Jean Cocteau also had a stormy love of opium. His book Maison de Santé features dozens of smoke-induced drawings about his experiences with opium.

The phenomenon of using drugs as a stimulant for art is also illustrated by the trend of artists taking different types of drugs while taking the same picture, mainly to show how different effects affect the aesthetic outcome. This trend dates back to the 1930s when experiments on the effects of psychedelics were in full swing and artists like Henri Michaux made drawings who were intoxicated with mescaline.

Painting by: Henry Michaux

The notorious performance artist Marina Abramovic has heavily integrated the use of various drugs into her performances. As part of her performance “Rhythm 2”, she took medication against catatonia in order to cause a loss of body control when fully conscious. An hour later, she was on schizophrenia medication to induce what she described as unconsciousness. The purpose of the performance was to experiment with consciousness and unconsciousness.

Her work represents an interesting intersection between the practice of drug use for the production of art and the representation of drugs themselves in art.

Drugs in art and as art

Artists have long been writing, painting, making music and performing pieces about drugs. The entirety of Dr. Dres The Chronic is a witness to this phenomenon.

Cannabis and hallucinogens are probably the most popular kids on the block for this practice. However, other drugs are also often used as a medium for art.

At first glance, the “Ecce Animal” by the Dutch artist Diddo is a skull made of chalk. However, the sculpture is actually a combination of cocaine and gelatin from the street. It serves as a thought-provoking thesis about the role cocaine plays in resolving the conflict between human courtesy and our lower, more animal instincts.

Another contemporary artist who frequently uses drugs as a medium is Sarah Schonfeld. In her work “All You Can Feel” Schönfeld puts liquid drugs (both legal and illegal substances) on photo negatives. After a few days or weeks, a unique chemical reaction develops that creates a “portrait” of each drug.

Picture by: Sarah Schönfeld

Perhaps one of the most famous examples of the use of drug imagery and aesthetics in the visual arts is Damien Hirst’s “Empathy Suite” at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. It’s a gaudy and disgusting example, but a familiar one. Dubbed “the world’s most expensive hotel suite” at $ 100,000 a night, Hirst incorporates a pharmaceutical aesthetic throughout the suite, perhaps as a kind of ironic wink at Vegas culture. For example, it encases pill bottles, medicines and other medical utensils in glass fixtures on kitchen islands, bars and bathroom cabinets.

I like to think that maybe he is trying to mentally torment the hyper billionaires who would stay in this room by constantly reminding them of the upcoming aspirin madness the next day. In fact, this theory is very likely, as many of the art in the hotel room bears similarities to an earlier work called “Standing Alone on the Precipice and Overlooking the Arctic Wastelands of Pure Terror”. My money is on irony.

A little less ostentatious, but more popular, The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” became an anthem for LSD. Over the years, John Lennon has repeatedly denied that the song was about LSD. According to Lennon, the name comes from a painting by his son. He attributes the pointed acronym of the title to sheer chance. Despite his protests, popular culture continues to insist on the song’s ambiguity, alluding to the ongoing demand for the depiction of drugs in art.

Destigmatizing the relationship between art and drugs

Stories of celebrities, especially musicians and artists, who use drugs are often used to further stigmatize drugs while broader society continues to ignore the fundamental issues that lead to the marginalization, isolation and disenfranchisement of people. The chorus says that people try to become better artists through drugs but accidentally get addicted. Despite the mainstream attitude of seeing artists as permanently unemployed, an artist’s job is actually incredibly demanding. It should come as no surprise that some succumb to the addiction. Jean-Michel Basquiat is one such example. His tragic story is often attributed to his drug use, although it was widely agreed that it began not with a desire to increase his creativity, but rather to escape the pressures of his life.

Picture by: Yann Caradec

Science has tried to explain the relationship between art and drugs by examining how drugs promote creativity, reduce inhibitions, arouse emotional openness, and encourage introspection. Speaking of emotional openness and introspection: New findings from research now tell us that certain drugs, when used correctly, actually have immense therapeutic potential and are therefore not as black and white as it is portrayed by anti-drug brigades.

Notorious psychedelic scientist and advocate Terence McKenna even came up with the “Stoned Ape” theory, which states that exposure to psilocybin mushrooms helped fuel human evolution by unleashing myriad physiological benefits, including the ability to To create art. With art, early humans developed a culture, learned to communicate better, understood abstract ideas, and formed communities. Consistent with this theory, it is plausible that drugs, many of which occur naturally, are simply an integral part of the human environment and those who wish to broaden their horizons and experiment with cognition and creativity will inevitably use them as tools.