ARTISTS RULED BY A DANGEROUS MUSE

HOCKNEY says he cannot paint or draw when high, but some artists and
writers have found that drink and drugs fuelled their imaginations before
cutting short their productive lives (DALYA ALBERGE writes).

Drugs were the downfall of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the graffiti artist who
became the darling of the New York art scene. He overdosed on heroin at the
age of 27 in 1988. Alcohol and drugs also dominated the life of Jackson
Pollock, master of dripping paint on to canvas, who was killed in a road
accident in 1956.

Among others who succumbed to drugs was the Dutch artist M.C. Escher
(1898-1972). The visual illusion and ambiguity between figure and ground
are said to have been affected by his "mindexpanding" experiences.

It is said that the poet Max Jacob supplied Picasso with opium and hashish
which dispelled tension and affected pictures such as the large Family of
Saltimbanques of 1905.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the best known opium addicts in literary
history: he became hooked in 1801 and tried unsuccessfully until his death
in 1834 to give it up.