Image via Complex Original
Earlier this month, the Internet was stunned and fascinated to see this skull made of compressed cocaine and gelatin, created by the artist Diddo. Namely, they were stunned that it could be called art. But what we realized was that this was far from the first time that the nefarious coca extract was used in some kind of artistic fashion. Whether it is material, situational, referential, or just plain tangential, cocaine has been a media of choice of artists for years past. Here is a list of Art Pieces Using Cocaine.
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Exhaled Cocaine by Cornelia Parker, 1996
Location: U.K.
Parker convinced customs agents to give her the ashes of seized cocaine. (Authorities burn the substance when it is confiscated, as it destroys and purifies it.) But the interesting thing about the title of this piece is that it is impossible to exhale cocaine. Rather, it is a cyclical comment on the flammable substances used to extract cocaine from coca leaves.
Cocainstador by William Acedo, 2012
Location: Los Angeles
Acedo's work exists in the tradition of Latin American woodblock cuts. This one comments on the devastation wrought by cocaine on Latin American communities, from the dark imperial history of the substance's past, to the modern violence the drug is responsible for on the streets today.
Portrait of Laura by Fred Tomaselli, 1995
Location: New York
Tomaselli's intricate paintings use drugs as the raw material for the visuals. Mushrooms, pharmaceuticals, and psychotropic leaves combine to be the work itself, replicating what it is like to be "on drugs," as he puts it. In Portrait of Laura Tomaselli uses his typical techniques. However, this painting is remarkably stark for Tomaselli, using just black and white in a grid of constellations that represents his wife's star sign. Next to each white orb, different words of intoxicants appear, including, in the bottom right, "cocaine."
American Excess by Plastic Jesus, 2012-2013
Location: Los Angeles
Though this piece didn't use the drug directly, its illicit nature (and our love of street art) helped land it on this list. The artist Plastic Jesus installed a giant hundred-dollar bill and a huge pile of faux-caine outside an Urban Outfitters in Los Angeles earlier this year. In fact, he did it twice. The piece, called American Excess, was removed promptly from the streets both times—first, right near the 2012 holiday season, and again on July 4. "The piece was motivated by the fact that cocaine is everywhere in society but it's like the elephant in the room. No one mentions it in polite society," the artist told Complex.
Felix by Fernando Mastrangelo, 2008-2009
Location: New York
Mastrangelo is known for creating sculptures out of unorthodox material, creating a commentary between medium and the work itself. This is how he described this sculpture in the artist's statement: "Citizens of developed countries live largely estranged from the conditions that provide their most basic commodities—oil, sugar, coffee, iron, rice, corn, etc.—commodities which function as the underpinnings of complex economic markets. My work over the past two years has focused on the use of such materials as media which I use to create cultural objects that propose a narrative of commodity production and the invisible labor force behind it."
Eat Shit and Die by Dash Snow, 2005
Location: New York
Dash Snow, as his name somewhat obliquely implies, was no stranger to cocaine use. But it was his contribution to the 2006 Whitney Biennial that he purportedly used real cocaine as source material for his piece. It simply was a mirrored disc on a record player, the rim coated with cocaine, along with a drumhead behind the apparatus simply reading "Eat Shit and Die." Typically shocking for Snow, it's actually one of his lesser-known works.
Ecce Animal by Diddo, 2013
Location: London
Early this month, people on the Internet were confused and outraged, by the appearance of this skull made out of compressed cocaine and gelatin. The fact that it was called "art" miffed many viewers. Why? How much did it cost? Where is it now? Because the piece was commissioned, the artist refused many questions asked of him. "Hopefully it's not that obvious," the artist told Bullett. "Ecce Animal is not intended to be parable on the self-destructiveness of addiction or substance abuse. Instead, it's the focal point for a thought process. I don't want to over-intellectualize, but it's the fusion of two icons that provokes thought and discussion on the nature of man. Specifically, about his creation of, and participation in, a society which echoes his own tendency to lose control."
Self-Portrait Under The Influence of Cocaine by Bryan Lews Saunders, 2008
Location: Nashville, Tenn.
Bryan Lewis Saunders is a performance artist living in Nashville. He garnered a certain level of acclaim a couple years ago when the Internet caught onto a series of self-portraits he did while under the influence of drugs. 50 of the drawings were completed, including this one above, where the artist ingested a half-gram of cocaine before putting pencil to paper.
Untitled by Tania Bruguera, 2009
Location: Bogota, Colombia
As part of a performance project that commented on the ongoing cultural conflicts in Colombia and perceived stereotypes, Cuban artist Tania Bruguera staged a work in 2009 at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. Her piece had three people talking into a microphone simultaneously. They represented a right-wing paramilitary fighter, a left-wing guerilla, and a displaced refugee. This was meant to symbolize the ineffective means of communication between the three groups in the years since conflict had come to the country. Then, an assistant with lines of cocaine on a tray walked among the audience, offering the drug to the patrons.
Night Sky Test #1 by Matthew Brandt, 2012
Location: Los Angeles
Like many of these works, using cocaine as the medium makes as strong a commentary as does the visual work itself. This is implicit in Matthew Brandt's Night Sky Test #1 where the artist silkscreened cocaine onto black velvet, creating facsimiles of the night sky. The message is that the viewing experience of the night is equivalent to being on drugs.
Powder by Daniel Knorr, 1994
Location: Munich, Germany
From the artist's statement: "Five hundred grams of confiscated cocaine were spread out on the floor of the Galerie der Künstler in Munich, Germany and encased in bulletproof glass. A sketch was made in the powder, both in order to emphasize the artist's participation and to minimize any tension that might result between the visitors and the police officers present. Two uniformed policemen and one undercover agent were on guard during the opening hours of the gallery. An information corner was set up by the police with materials about their work that passers-by were allowed to take with them."
Cocaine Buffet by Rob Pruitt, 1998
Location: New York
Conceptual artist Rob Pruitt was somewhat ostracized from the art world in the early '90s, after creating a poorly received tribute to African-American culture. But when he returned to good graces in 1998, it was a peace offering of sorts that the artist offered his patrons. For a gallery opening, instead of big-budget paintings or sculptures, he laid a 50-foot line of cocaine across mirrors in the gallery for the viewers to snort, which they did. It played into a pattern of critique and celebration that Pruitt has been toying with for years. And, as the art-world lore goes, all was forgiven.