A few years ago, my migraine-afflicted friend Margot submitted a painting to a call for entries. The Migraine Awareness Group (MAGNUM) was looking for artworks expressing the anguish of that condition. A pharmaceutical company had donated $400,000 to sponsor a touring bus-based exhibit. When art is recruited by advocacy, the latter usually insists on literal translations of disadvantage into explicit metaphor, since every disease, illness and syndrome is competing for attention and the same charitable or grant dollar. Boarding the headache bus with me in Copley Square, Margot said, “Everything I paint passes through the prism of my migraines. So it doesn’t matter what the subject matter is.” Because most migraineur-artistes regard their illness as something integrated with perception, they are less inclined to objectify it.
Such is not the case in Addiction and Art, a collection of 61 paintings, photographs, sculptures, mixed media, digital art, drawings and silk screens depicting substance abuse and addiction. The editors say their primary goal “is to reveal the human experience of addiction so that readers may reach a new understanding of addiction as a chronic medical illness requiring treatment.” Many of the selected artworks are metaphorical narratives, craving interpretation. Each year in the U.S., one in five deaths is caused by addiction – 435,000 from tobacco, 85,000 from alcohol, 17,000 from drug use. Disturbed that addiction treatment “is not integrated into mainstream medicine,” the editors ultimately seek “adequate funding for addiction treatment and prevention.”
According to Nielson ratings, I was one of 1.4 million viewers who watched “Intervention” on A&E on May 10. A father and mother described the death of their 14-year old son from inhaling Freon. They had noticed that the boy’s behavior had turned aggressive, angry, erratic. They suspected that his tongue was frost-bitten. In terms of sheer reach, “Intervention” stands a much better chance of “revealing the human experience of addiction” than a limited press run of a book of art reproductions. But “Intervention,” like all reality shows, repeats a set narrative form each week. Its predictability, including a requisite epiphany (sometimes arriving too late), is both a hook and release – the audience experiences closure and the advertisers are comfortable. “Intervention” implies a treatment formula: facing the grotesque, both caregivers and users may achieve resolution.
Addiction and Art emerges from a troubled sense of the difficulties involved in creating public policy and medical protocols for addiction treatment. The editors report that between 1997 and 2001, healthcare and lost productivity costs of tobacco use totaled $170 billion. Another $180 billion was spent on or lost through alcoholism. They want us to change how we perceive substance abuse disorders “from seeing them as a weakness or moral failing deserving of punishment to accepting them as chronic medical illnesses requiring treatment.” At the same time, CNBC’s “One Nation, Overweight” says that the cost of treating weight-related illnesses will double to $344 billion annually by 2018. In the program, a 62-year old obese man says, “I did this to myself. Who said I had to eat all that?” But the public regards addicts as having made bad choices that exploit the generosity of taxpayers. On a recent talk show in Boston, callers told stories about addicts who ride the circuit between the courts and methadone clinics – they commit a crime, get busted and sent by the judge to the clinic for 90 days. Then they’re back out on the streets. “The Biggest Loser” on NBC, watched in tandem with “Intervention,” would seem to reinforce the message that addiction like obesity may be a bad condition – but it can be overcome between commercial breaks.
The work in Addiction and Art is moving because it is helpless even while exerting power over the viewer. Although the damage depicted may suggest its better alternative, the very force of expression cancels the suggestion. It’s a long reach to wellness. Addiction is depicted as a distorted body, a warped cultural artifact, a weapon. Each artist provides a brief statement to accompany his or her work. Bricelyn H. Straunch (“Untitled 101,” pastel) writes about the “enduring dichotomies” in the mind of the user, and says her piece is meant to “evoke isolation and introspection in the viewer.”
The editorial language of Addiction and Art consists of officialese, the language of good intentions and repressed frustrations. The art is what matters here – but if one ignores the proselytizing language of the underfunded clinic, the art often seems wonderfully disinterested in lecturing on changes it cannot achieve. It mainly wishes to show what exists. It is improvident, providing nothing for the future, not even hope. In contrast, the artists’ statements favor the redemption narrative. Michael Mendez (“99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” toned silver gelatin print) says the work “allowed me to explore my own admittedly self-destructive involvement with drugs and alcohol,” but his note like the others strikes me as intrusive, irrelevant, and bland.
Exerting stark powers, these artworks illuminate the emotional and societal complexities of the addictive psyche and situation. They both compete with and supplement the mass entertainment element of “Intervention.” Meanwhile, the psychological, social, commercial, financial, legal and political aspects of addiction continue to be formidable in their immovability. Only the individual expression of grief and fear, absorbed by the one who looks and hears, seems able to speak in moving language.
[Published by Johns Hopkins University Press on April 21, 2010. 184 pages, 8 x 10.5”, $29.95 hardcover]
The artwork displayed above:
1
“Heartache,” Scott G. Brooks, Washington DC, oil on canvas, 16×20″, 2005
2
“The Ticket to Recovery,” Todd Lim, Stamford, CT, silkscreen on board, 24×36″, 2002/2007
3
“Boils,” Abbey Aichinger, Avon IN, watercolor, 8×20″, 2005
4
“Nail Remover,” Linda Lou Hubshman, Los Angeles CA, acrylic & ink on wood, 23.5×11.5″, 1998
On Addiction
A very worthy undertaking. My heart of course goes out to all who suffer directly and indirectly. But lest it be said that addiction is merely to the self, to friends and family, let us not forget that a similar Soma-dream has been marketed to us all, chiefly those ones labelled Happiness, Satisfaction and Excess. That anything that is good to do is worth doing too much of is a given. But we take that knowledge and what do we do with it? How the path deviates and then puts the weak and the strong into zones where they cannot help themselves is the case that needs to be addressed. I won’t cast the first stone — there is little point — but so much of the world appears to require addiction, not to say ignorance, and it cares little about the pain any of it causes. On one level, addiction is to the way it operates. Does anyone actually conceive of a world with much less pain? Who is in charge of that?