High Art

CLARIFICATION APPENDED

“Up until LSD, I never realized that there was anything beyond this normal working state of consciousness,” George Harrison famously said in 1987. “But all the pressure was such that, as Bob Dylan said, ‘There must be some way out of here.’ I think for me it was definitely LSD. The first time I took it, I just blew everything away. I had such an incredible feeling of well being, that there was a God and I could see Him in every blade of glass. It was like gaining hundreds of years experience within 12 hours. It changed me and there was no way back to what I was before. It wasn’t all good, though, because it left quite a lot of questions as well.”

Forty-five years after the fateful day when Bob Dylan took another position in the book of rock legend by introducing The Beatles to marijuana, these two acts still remind the contemporary world of the vast possibilities that mind-altering substances provide in creative pursuits—and their potentially world-changing implications.

Present-day artists continue to seek ways to emerge from a hackneyed state of consciousness—where the sky is blue and grass is green—into a kaleidoscopic world where they can discover new possibilities for their work. And despite stereotypes to the contrary, Harvard has a definite community of drug using, and promising, artists who embrace their ability to both connect with one another on various mental levels and break free of the constraints imposed by the insular “Harvard bubble.”

“I feel like it’s the kind of people who like to have conversations and are interesting,” says a senior Visual and Environmental Studies concentrator, referring to those Harvard artists who use drugs. “They like to get high and get out of this bubble that is Harvard, that is oppressive and socially limited and makes you jump through hoops all day and sometimes you need to get out of your own bullshit and just shoot the shit.”

Whether you call it “getting out of your own bullshit” to “just shoot the shit” or something else, many artists on campus use drugs—mostly alcohol and marijuana—as a means to find their way out of here, and to some extent, to find a way out of their own minds. Lighting a bong or hitting the bottle, these students use conscious-altering substances to lubricate the transition from thought to work, a process possible when sober but sometimes easier while not. Some use the activity as a communal starting point, gathering around campus to drink or smoke before setting off to work. At other times, they sit alone with a bottle of wine or a well-rolled joint, pondering words and paint.

Yet despite this dabbling, Harvard mothers needn’t start worrying that their Ivy dollars are contributing to the mass decay of society. Users on campus, despite being users, are ultimately still Harvard students, too concerned about their academic success and artistic integrity to fall into serious dependency. When all is said and done, they want to produce high-quality art that will resonate with an audience on an emotional, intellectual level, not a chemical one.

BREAKING THE SEAL

“[It’s] evident to everyone that [The Beatles] entered their most fertile creative period after they began smoking grass and taking LSD,” wrote Extension School instructor John McMillian in an email; he is currently working on a book about the legendary band. “Same for Bob Dylan. And I can think of several major writers, like Edgar Allen Poe, Aldous Huxley and Jack Kerouac, whose use of narcotics, hallucinogens and stimulants apparently enhanced their work. But certainly there was a destructive side to this as well. Diminishing returns set in pretty quickly, and several of the people I just mentioned ended up suffering mightily because of their use of drugs. This may well be a question worth researching, but I would never suggest that someone try to enhance their creativity by experimenting with drugs in an unsupervised setting.” Like the many greats who preceded them, student artists—both poets and painters—use drugs to ease the process of creation.

“I oftentimes smoke marijuana before going to the seven hour VES classes or before I work on a piece,” says one student, “but less for creative inspiration than for getting the mind and body into a sort of a mode for allowing the creativity to come. It helps you not get fixated on a certain idea or color and allows a little more flow in the creation of whatever you’re making.”

Most students agree that these drugs don’t provide creative thoughts; rather, they loosen the constraints of a rational human mind and build the confidence necessary to express unique or nonsensical ideas. “Drugs can sometimes facilitate a person’s ability to differently represent the creativity that is already inside him,” says Justin B. Wymer ’12, a poet, who admits to occasionally using alcohol outside of its societally-sanctioned role as a conversation starter and instead as a literary jumpstart.

“Sometimes I drink just a little bit because it is a way to break consciousness,” he says. “I don’t think drinking makes me more creative. But I think it makes me less afraid to say the creative thoughts that I already have.”

This artistic objective to break with a preconceived reality comes from a long line of poetic thought, reaching all the way back to Andre Breton and the origins of surrealism. By breaking with the predetermined images of the world in their accepted states and by embracing the unconscious, which does not play by the rules of reality, artists can shed insight on society in interesting and progressive ways.

“For me, colors and tastes really cross over with the other senses. And a lot of times whenever I’m sober [I think], ‘Wow, people are going to think that sounds crazy,’” Wymer says. “But when I say that someone talks to me in cinnamon when I’m not as inhibited as much with alcohol, I’m not afraid to write it.”

Lingering in the unconscious can thus produce unique and seemingly illogical thoughts, but it takes an artist’s trained, and sometimes tripped-out, mind to grasp the images produced there and recreate them on the conscious level.

If a little liquor can reduce self-critical anxiety and facilitate the flow of creative thought, who wouldn’t want to indulge in such an effective weapon? Not all students are on board the yellow submarine—or any other color submarine for that matter.

Ingrid V. Pierre ’12, a devout Buddhist and VES fine arts concentrator, chooses to abstain from drug use entirely, and the idea of usage while undertaking creative pursuits strikes her as particularly unsavory.

“Being a Zen Buddhist is all about freeing yourself from any unnatural elements, which will hinder your own ability to pursue what you want to achieve in life. In my case that’s to make art,” she says. “In the fine arts department, it’s about being fluid and free while also staying focused.”

While some students may take a toke before picking up the paintbrush, Pierre is wary of the consequences of drug use and their effects compromising the integrity of her art. She is determined to pursue her painting with an unadulterated state of mind.

“I don’t particularly like all the stuff The Beatles did when they were high. I think it cheapens everything,” Pierre says. “[Drug use] does get in the way of art making and an honest representation of your skills... I think it’s possible for people to produce good work when they’re high. But if you rely upon that as your sole artistic inspiration, it’s an awful thing. What happens when you don’t have access to it?”

BLAZING NEW PATHS

Yet most artists on campus are far from dependent on their drug use. Realizing the potential dangers of an addictive habit and not needing to always be high, they deviate from the stoner stereotype, just as likely to be taking drugs to focus as to chill out.

“I think the whole idea of a stoned artist is a cliché. It’s not real and especially not at Harvard,” Pierre says. “People here are very conceptual, but they don’t need drugs to augment that.”

In addition to the intelligence on which they can rely, Harvard students are simply too busy to pause long enough to have the extensive, conscious-altering experience that can produce creative results in a timely, practical way.

“For me, it [marijuana use] is not the creative inspiration—it’s not some hallucinogenic experience,” says a junior VES concentrator. “I don’t know how much time people here have for that.”

“[Creative writers] drink a lot before they write. Visual arts people smoke more. People here are really too serious, though, at least about their academic ventures,” she adds.

For some, this dedication to academics made Harvard more appealing than schools for the arts.

“I chose to come to Harvard [instead of RISD] because I didn’t like the scene,” Pierre says, considering her comparative impression of drug use at either school. “All the stereotypes of an artist, that’s what you see there.”

Psychology professor Shelley H. Carson affirms the notion that drugs may be less present on our campus in comparison to others. “I would expect there to be less drug use in the artistic community at Harvard, because their ability to be an artist depends on their ability to stay in school,” she says.

Being an artist at Harvard also usually means a great respect for the creative process. “I think the people at Harvard are much more cerebral,” Pierre says. “They care more about the work they are producing. They are really sincere.”

This insistence on artistic integrity and quality typically necessitates an inclusion of a sober perspective even when the artwork was produced under the influence. “Even for me, whenever I occasionally write while I drink, it still takes me being sober to go through and edit and do revisions,” Wymer says. “It’s not that every time I drink and write it’s going to be fantastic.”

Indeed, many acknowledge that the work they create while drunk or high may not consistently be of the greatest quality. “Sometimes it’s shit,” he continues. “Sometimes it’s not.”

DIFFERENT STRAINS

The times that it’s not, however, do not necessarily indicate the magical effects of drug-induced, or drug-dependent, brilliance. From dissolving the inhibitions of artists to temporarily rearranging their worlds, drugs themselves play something of a placebo role in revealing creative insights.

“Although there is no reason to believe that marijuana enhances creativity, there is evidence that marijuana makes people feel more creative,” UC Davis Dean Keith Simonton says. “That seems to be because self-critical judgment gets turned off. Only later, when they’re no longer high, and they look at what they produced, do they realize that they were nowhere as creative as they thought at the time. The same holds for many other altered states of consciousness. We might have a particularly wonderful dream some night, but find that it bores our friends silly when we try to recount it.”

Yet the research that does exist has hypothesized that artists tend to be more open to and garner greater benefits from experimenting with drugs, even if these effects remain in the mind without translating onto paper or canvas. Researchers prospose that the magnitude of a substance’s psychological effects differs according to one’s genetic makeup. In her research review, “Creativity and Psychopathology: A Shared-Vulnerability Model,” Carson argues that creative individuals tend to respond more positively to the high that drugs induce, since their naturally less inhibited state is more conducive to artistic production. “Genetic vulnerability factors... may predispose certain individuals to experience altered mental states that provide access to—and interest in—associational material typically filtered out of conscious awareness during normal waking states,” Carson explained. “They are smoking because of that openness,” Simonton reiterates, “not open because they’re smoking.”

But the danger associated with substance abuse is always a lurking threat. Considering that the fine line between occasional use and dependence isn’t always so easy to maintain, Simonton warns that consistent drug use can quickly devolve into a harmful and unproductive habit. “The minimal research that has been conducted suggests that marijuana does not enhance creativity. In fact, it seems to depress creativity, especially when the use is chronic,” he writes in an email.

But these studies are not definitive because of the legal difficulties that the scientific community faces in attempting to validate the benefits of drug use oft cited by artists.

“The reason is simple: you can’t really conduct research in the laboratory,” Simonton writes in an email. “As a consequence, almost all investigations on the topic are questionnaire-survey type studies in which students are asked about their use of marijuana and then tested on measures associate with creativity. Because the studies are correlation rather than experimental, it’s hard to discern the causal relations.”

Hallucinogens, on the other hand, have been proven to play a more pivotal role in dictating the direction of an artist’s work. For example, LSD was commonly given to interested test subjects to gauge the drug’s effects and was found to disinhibit normal sensory perceptions, launching the artist into a potentially productive psychedelic experience. These more psychoactive drugs can actually become a type of muse that influence the content of the art, the most famous example of these acid trips being “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.”

Still, as one poet emphasizes, “If you want [your art] to be accessible to a lot of people, [drug use] is unlikely to be a regular thing.”

Owing to their awareness of the dangers of approaching their art from a drugged-out perspective, Harvard students continue to smoke and drink before, during, and after working, but only occasionally. These artists pull their art from a core of genuine creativity.

“I think that creativity that someone has is already inside the person,” Wymer says. “So the only thing that drugs do is release.”

—Staff writer Noel D. Barlow can be reached at nbarlow@fas.harvard.edu

—Staff writer Eunice Y. Kim can be reached at kim30@fas.harvard.edu.

CLARIFICATION

The Nov. 13 arts article "High Art" took a quote about drug use in art from Extension School instructor John McMillian out of context. In addition to saying that many artistic greats used drugs during their most creative periods, McMillan said that he does not advocate drug use and that some of the artists suffered mightily from the negative side effects of drugs.