Cocaine and the arts
February 24, 2010 8:01 AM
How can you tell when art has been made under the influence of cocaine?
A couple of days ago I read an article about the britpop and new lad scenes of the mid to late nineties. Someone in that article - maybe Damon Albarn? - mentioned that cocaine use was a very integral part of those scenes and you could tell by the way some ads and record covers looked. This made me wonder. I've never tried cocaine, I know nothing of the high (apart from what I've read in books like "Bright Lights, Big City" and so on): How can I tell? What are the characteristics of visual art made under the influence of cocaine? Psychedelic art is pretty easy to identify, is cocaine art as well?
A couple of days ago I read an article about the britpop and new lad scenes of the mid to late nineties. Someone in that article - maybe Damon Albarn? - mentioned that cocaine use was a very integral part of those scenes and you could tell by the way some ads and record covers looked. This made me wonder. I've never tried cocaine, I know nothing of the high (apart from what I've read in books like "Bright Lights, Big City" and so on): How can I tell? What are the characteristics of visual art made under the influence of cocaine? Psychedelic art is pretty easy to identify, is cocaine art as well?
This is largely journalistic claptrap. There are no definitive art styles that are produced because of cocaine consumption. You can read how cocaine affects people physiologically and mentally, but the experience of being on drugs and the art produced because of that experience is highly subjective. Further, styles like psychedelic art are meant to evoke the feeling of psychedelics but I highly doubt that the majority of it is actually produced under the influence of said drugs. People like a certain style and the feelings that it evokes and work within that style.
posted by proj at 9:49 AM on February 24, 2010
posted by proj at 9:49 AM on February 24, 2010
mentioned that cocaine use was a very integral part of those scenes and you could tell by the way some ads and record covers looked
I think that this is projection and confirmation bias. He can "see" the coke because he knows it was there, but isn't doing an examination of whether those themes and styles exist in non-coke-fueled art from the same period.
Also, it's a nice sure-fire-quotable past-romanticizing thing to say to a journalist.
And what do the ads and album covers have to do with the musicians producing the music anyway? Different jobs done by different people.
posted by desuetude at 10:07 AM on February 24, 2010
I think that this is projection and confirmation bias. He can "see" the coke because he knows it was there, but isn't doing an examination of whether those themes and styles exist in non-coke-fueled art from the same period.
Also, it's a nice sure-fire-quotable past-romanticizing thing to say to a journalist.
And what do the ads and album covers have to do with the musicians producing the music anyway? Different jobs done by different people.
posted by desuetude at 10:07 AM on February 24, 2010
Not visual art, but La Roux (Elly Jackson) claimed in a couple of interviews (one here) that she and her music collaborator had enhanced the top frequencies in her recordings so that it had that '80's coke sound'. They reckoned that many 80s tracks were trebly because coke-fuelled musicians and producers were drawn to higher frequencies. But it sounds like typical La Roux bollocks to me.
posted by dowcrag at 10:09 AM on February 24, 2010
posted by dowcrag at 10:09 AM on February 24, 2010
The first reviews I read about Zomby's work (MySpace link) specifically mentioned a recent fad in London for ketamine. Whether this is a truthful reflection of a scene is open to question, I suppose, but I don't think you can deny that certain forms of dance music are directed at enhancing or soundtracking the experience of being on Ecstasy, for example. As far as being able to tell what music is produced under the influence of cocaine, I think that some albums (Oasis' Be Here Now, for example, which Noel Gallagher himself described as "the sound of ... a bunch of guys, on coke, in the studio, not giving a fuck") have been held up as examples of the hyperindulgent inability to edit or complete anything that comes along with too much cocaine and too much time in the studio.
posted by jokeefe at 11:07 AM on February 24, 2010
posted by jokeefe at 11:07 AM on February 24, 2010
There is no evidence to back me up here, and no judgement or opinion towards the artists is intended... but I have always had a feeling that My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Eno and Byrne was influenced by cocaine use. I don't know if those fine gentlemen were users or not but the creation indeed invokes a cocaine feeling to me.
posted by Oireachtac at 11:17 AM on February 24, 2010
posted by Oireachtac at 11:17 AM on February 24, 2010
It's pretty unlikely one would be physically capable of designing the geometric intricacies which define psychedelic art while tripping on acid. More likely, the striking visual hallucinations one might observe during an acid trip would be replicated after the fact.
LSD : Alex Grey :: Cocaine : Terry Richardson and American Apparel
Cocaine is ubiquitous throughout the club scene in New York and Los Angeles, therefore it seems to go hand-in-hand with fashion trends; this is well-represented in modern fashion photography.
Think loud. Bright, neon colors and glittery, shiny synthetic fabric. Studio 54 disco era fashion; Hollywood celebrity culture; haphazard lines; self-centered attitudes and behavior.
The current widespread regurgitation of 70s and 80s aesthetics might even stem in part from a rediscovery of cocaine. Or perhaps nostalgia for the time when cocaine became popular in the United States has driven a resurgence in cocaine use. This nostalgia might have been inherited from some parents of current twenty-somethings, who were twenty-something themselves in the 1980s.
All of this may better reflect a cocaine aesthetic than whatever was going on in the mid-to-late 90s through 2003 or thereabout. Albarn's vague account of that era would be incomplete without mentioning ecstasy, which was as ubiquitous as raves and UFO pants at the time his bands Blur and Gorillaz were most active.
posted by xndr at 11:28 AM on February 24, 2010
LSD : Alex Grey :: Cocaine : Terry Richardson and American Apparel
Cocaine is ubiquitous throughout the club scene in New York and Los Angeles, therefore it seems to go hand-in-hand with fashion trends; this is well-represented in modern fashion photography.
Think loud. Bright, neon colors and glittery, shiny synthetic fabric. Studio 54 disco era fashion; Hollywood celebrity culture; haphazard lines; self-centered attitudes and behavior.
The current widespread regurgitation of 70s and 80s aesthetics might even stem in part from a rediscovery of cocaine. Or perhaps nostalgia for the time when cocaine became popular in the United States has driven a resurgence in cocaine use. This nostalgia might have been inherited from some parents of current twenty-somethings, who were twenty-something themselves in the 1980s.
All of this may better reflect a cocaine aesthetic than whatever was going on in the mid-to-late 90s through 2003 or thereabout. Albarn's vague account of that era would be incomplete without mentioning ecstasy, which was as ubiquitous as raves and UFO pants at the time his bands Blur and Gorillaz were most active.
posted by xndr at 11:28 AM on February 24, 2010
Yes, Please! by the Happy Mondays was famously recorded in a cloud of crack cocaine smoke. It don't come much laddier than these blokes.
posted by battleshipkropotkin at 12:14 PM on February 24, 2010
posted by battleshipkropotkin at 12:14 PM on February 24, 2010
jokeefe: "The first reviews I read about Zomby's work (MySpace link) specifically mentioned a recent fad in London for ketamine. Whether this is a truthful reflection of a scene is open to question, I suppose, but I don't think you can deny that certain forms of dance music are directed at enhancing or soundtracking the experience of being on Ecstasy, for example."
Not intended as a derail, but there are drugs other than acid and MDMA that clearly influence types of music once you know what to look for. Huge swathes of the dubstep and acid techno scenes are obviously a reaction to the explosion of ketamine in the UK over the last however many years (it's not a recent fad confined to London at all).
posted by turkeyphant at 1:24 PM on February 24, 2010
Not intended as a derail, but there are drugs other than acid and MDMA that clearly influence types of music once you know what to look for. Huge swathes of the dubstep and acid techno scenes are obviously a reaction to the explosion of ketamine in the UK over the last however many years (it's not a recent fad confined to London at all).
posted by turkeyphant at 1:24 PM on February 24, 2010
Interesting, interesting. I thought this question had a clear-cut answer, I figured I'd get a lot of answers like xndr's "[b]right, neon colors and glittery, shiny synthetic fabric (...) haphazard lines" - things to look for in paintings, videos etc. Examples of bodies of work clearly made by artists familiar with cocaine. But apparently there isn't really a cocaine aesthetic like there's a psychedelic aesthetic... right?
posted by soundofsuburbia at 2:58 PM on February 24, 2010
posted by soundofsuburbia at 2:58 PM on February 24, 2010
They reckoned that many 80s tracks were trebly because coke-fuelled musicians and producers were drawn to higher frequencies.
Maybe. I'd say it also sounds like the 80's because people were perfectly happy to listen to cassette tapes on a crappy boombox or radio on a crappy car stereo. You can't rely on bass in those instances.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:22 PM on February 24, 2010
Maybe. I'd say it also sounds like the 80's because people were perfectly happy to listen to cassette tapes on a crappy boombox or radio on a crappy car stereo. You can't rely on bass in those instances.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:22 PM on February 24, 2010
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posted by xndr at 8:54 AM on February 24, 2010