To Take Drugs or Not To Take Drugs: That is the Question.
By L.DISANE
I was tempted to choose a side and say that artists need to stop taking drugs, or at the least, to reduce their current levels of consumption, but I decided against it because I believe anyone above the year of 18 is old enough to evaluate whether the consumption of drugs, legal and illegal, is good for their health or not. And by health I mean their spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical health. This article will rather focus on the last days of Jean-Michel Basquiat and his struggles with drugs, more specifically heroine – the drug which ultimately caused his untimely death at a relatively young age.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist who was part of the New York Neo-expressionism movement. His paintings were a tool for introspection, and his subject matter was mainly the experiences of African-American people; the artwork Irony of Negro Policeman (1981) is an example of this. Today he is celebrated all over the world, and his legacy is very much alive.
Basquiat rose to prominence in the art world because of his raw expression, and childlike experimental nature. This rise to the pinnacle, however, did not just come with positives, but it also came with negatives, and his drug usage was one of those negatives. Initially he just consumed marijuana, just as all emerging artists usually do to get their creative juices flowing, but as soon as he became more financially liberated, he started having access to people from all different walks of life, and it is some of these people who would later introduce him to “harder” drugs.
This period of drug usage affected his health a great deal, and there are many photos of him online looking very unhealthy as a result. The art industry and some of his true friends became concerned with his deteriorating state. They unanimously advised him against the lifestyle of drugs, and because the young man valued his life, and was mature enough to listen to good reasoning, he made an effort to change his ways. Eventually, he won his battle against drugs and became clean.
Obviously this was a great thing, because at that point, it meant that a sober Jean-Michel Basquiat would then be able to continue producing “legendary” art without the interruption of his struggles with drugs, but the opposite actually happened. Subsequent to sobering up, he would go on to experience what was probably the greatest dilemma of his life. Now that he was sober and producing work again, the art industry complained about the quality of work he was producing; they said to him that his art was no longer “legendary”, that it was dead and had no soul to it. His end product once he became clean had apparently lost the standard the industry required from him.
Image: Google Archives.
Basquiat was confused; the same art industry which pleaded with, and assisted him to get clean, was also saying that his work, post sobering up, was below par. Art was his passion, and more importantly, it was how he sustained his life. His art was what paid the bills and bought the food to eat. Just take a moment to imagine him having to ask himself the painful question: “Must I take drugs to produce legendary work even though they are killing me? Or must I stay sober, and kill my art career instead?” I am not sure what he ended up choosing, but I do know that he went on to die because of a heroine overdose at the age of 27 years.
I would like to think that he would still be alive had he stopped using drugs.
PS: I also think that a dead career is always better than a dead human being.
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