‘Drugs bore us with their paradises.
Let them give us a little knowledge instead.
This is not a century for paradise.’

Henri Michaux, Knowledge through the Abyss, 1961

In January 1955, Franco-Belgian writer, poet, and artist Henri Michaux began experimenting with mescaline, a psychotropic drug derived from the Mexican peyote cactus commonly used in Native American rituals. Fascinated by medical research and scientific experimentation, he sought to explore his ‘inner space.’ Through the mid-1960s, his experiments expanded beyond mescaline to include LSD, hashish, and psilocybin from magic mushrooms. During these sessions, he followed a rigorous scientific protocol, documenting the effects of his altered consciousness at 15-minute intervals.

Michaux’s handwritten notes became the foundation for his mescaline writings: Miserable Miracle (1956) and Infinite Turbulence (1957), followed by Knowledge through the Abyss (1961). The approximately 300 drawings in pen, pencil, and charcoal he created under the influence of mescaline – now featured in ‘Henri Michaux: Mescaline Drawings’ at the Courtauld Institute, London – are described by the curator of the exhibition, Ketty Gottardo, as a ‘trembling seismography’ of the artist’s psyche. Franck Leibovici, poet and archivist of Michaux’s work, notes that they attempt to ‘reproduce the somatic memory of the mescaline vibration.’ More broadly, this series revives questions that haunted the 20th century: Can drug use meaningfully contribute to artistic practice? Does it emerge from individual exploration or collective generational energy? And, crucially, what are its limitations?

For Michaux, drug experimentation was primarily a means of self-exploration. He was following in the footsteps of the Surrealists who, captivated by dreams and the subconscious, turned to psychoactive substances to stimulate creativity and unleash the imagination. In the 1920s, Francis Picabia, an inventive provocateur who proclaimed himself more of a prankster, idiot, and clown rather than a painter, openly acknowledged his attraction to opium. Ever the contrarian, he declared: ‘I don’t paint what my eyes see, I paint what my mind sees, what my soul sees.’ Several of his works directly evoke opiate-induced hallucinations. In pieces like Hera (c. 1929), The Sphinx (1929), and Aello (1930) Picabia employed a technique of ‘transparency’ or the superimposition of faces, bodies, and natural elements, immersing viewers in sensual, hallucinatory reveries.

The 1960s marked a turning point in the relationship between drugs and artistic creation, for which Michaux’s mescaline drawings served as a precursor. During this period of social, political, and artistic upheaval, artists sought new freedoms. They took inspiration from the Beat and hippie movements, psychedelic literature like Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception (1954), spiritual journeys to the East, and figures like Timothy Leary who advocated for the use of LSD. Psychotropic drug consumption evolved into an artistic expression linked to countercultural and protest movements.

One of the main figures of the Beat Generation in France was artist and performer Jean-Jacques Lebel, who used his body as a ‘traveling laboratory’ in his provocative happenings. His drawings and collages serve as records of his experiences with psilocybin and peyote. He also performed under LSD, as in 120 Minutes Dedicated to the Marquis de Sade (1966), during which spectators entered a space filled with strobing lights, jazz music, and raw meat. He coined his own terms for substances, such as ‘hallucinatory agents’ or ‘psychovitamins’, drawing parallels between his interest in hallucinogenic drugs and his fascination with madness.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the young Adrian Piper began attending the School of Visual Arts in New York, her artistic practice turning toward subconscious experimentation. Her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 2018, ‘A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965–2016’, showcased many of her early works which were marked by a feverish exploration of consciousness and her practice of meditation. In 1965, when LSD was still legal in the USA, Piper experimented with it for six months. This experience culminated in a series of paintings and drawings reminiscent of psychedelic art, with its acid-bright colors and swirling forms, evoking the concert posters of the era. Her earliest explorations of self-representation date to this period too, such as a series of self-portraits, LSD Self-Portrait from the Inside Out (1966), in which a female silhouette appears to dissolve into the perspective of a kaleidoscopic construction, suspended somewhere between op art and comic book aesthetics. ‘I view all of my work from that period as signposts that point the way to a deeper reality that by definition can’t be depicted or described,’ she explained in an interview in 2003 with Matteo Guarnaccia published in Il Manifesto.

The late 1970s and early 1980s witnessed a surge in heroin consumption – a substance that, for some, was as fascinating as it was lethal, with its instant gratification and fleeting moments of ecstasy. Scottish-born photographer Graham MacIndoe documented his personal journey by photographing himself during his years of dependency. His images chronicle his battle with drug addiction while highlighting the creative use of photography as a pathway to recovery. Describing his process, MacIndoe states, ‘Initially, I had thought I could take pictures of other people taking drugs, but I gradually turned the camera on myself as a way to document dependency from the inside.’ Two decades later, American graffiti artist and photographer Dash Snow – whom The New York Times dubbed in 2009, ‘The latest incarnation of that timeless New York species, the Downtown Baudelaire’ – would not survive his heroin addiction, leaving behind an artistic community shaken by the loss of one of their own.

In Mexico in 1996, the Belgian artist Francis Alÿs continued these investigations for a new commission and exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, not far from Copenhagen. Then based in Mexico City and familiar with ancestral ayahuasca rituals – an Amazonian plant said to equal ten years of psychoanalytic therapy in one trip – the Belgian artist proposed to continue his walking practice. Seeking to be ‘physically present’ while ‘mentally absent,’ he wandered the city for a week while under the influence of different psychotropic substances: spirits, hashish, speed, heroin, cocaine, Valium, and ecstasy. Alÿs documented these experiences through various means, including notes, photographs, and drawings. In the exhibition, he presented Narcotourism (1996) as a photographic image of his feet in Converse sneakers and a page of text, comprising diary accounts of his experiences (‘Awareness of a change in state, but not followed by visual echo. Enhanced auditory acuity. Appetite gone. Diminished. Night, nausea, and thirst.’)

Between mysticism, experimentation, and inspiration, these artists demonstrate how drugs can open imaginative horizons, liberate thought, and nourish creative processes. The price, however, is sometimes a destructive addiction, as Snow’s example reveals. But ultimately, these artists show the significance of provocation and nonconformism within artistic expression, as they continue to work at society’s margins, in the hollows of the visible world.