When I was at school our ideas of an outrageous impressionist collage embodied a canvas painted with random stripes and curves to which you applied a thick coat of wet cement, then rode your bicycle across it in several directions, added your dog's pawprints and perhaps a stray discarded bone and some feathers, and let the whole thing dry. Some people over the years have applauded such "art" to the skies and even talked of originality and genius. Nowadays anything can be hailed as outstanding art, from a pile of tin cans to a tank of dismembered animals.
To such manifestations of genius I have always paid scant respect, and have been indignant that the perpetrators of such artifacts should make fortunes in deceiving the public. To judge from an interview published in the Lancet for August 28, Fred Tomaselli of Brooklyn has really plumbed the depths in composing collages built up from arrangements of medicinal tablets and capsules embedded in resin. The connection between drugs and visual art, he argues, is evident. "I want beauty to provide pleasure, like drugs would," he says. Having himself experimented with drugs, he decided they had conflicting aspects, saving and destroying, and this was the artist's paradox.
Tomaselli claims to incorporate both medicinal and recreational drugs in his collages, relying on samples provided by a doctor. For example, he has a long strip of 365 aspirin tablets, and patterns of coloured tablets and capsules. He also has incorporated nicotine patches, cannabis and datura leaves, methamphetamine tablets and other prescription drugs and hallucinants.
This is dangerous territory, and the collages promise an exotic source for drug abusers who can chip out the tempting items. The legal position must be shaky, despite the claim that these components are thoroughly sealed in with resins and varnishes. It is not surprising to learn that French customs seized one of Tomaselli's exhibits which was bound for a gallery in France. In any case, there is no justification in trying to palm off drugs and medicines as art. The categories and uses are quite distinct, and we must take drugs seriously, not as some kind of social lark.