Pubdate: Thu, 27 May 1999 Source: Times, The (UK) Copyright: 1999 Times Newspapers Ltd Contact: http://www.the-times.co.uk/ Author: Dalya Alberge HOCKNEY SAYS DRUGS ARE FINE BUT NOT FOR ART On the eve of his London show the artist tells Dalya Alberge why marijuana should be legal David Hockney, Britain's most celebrated contemporary artist, breezed into London from his California home yesterday and had an immediate brush with controversy. Holding court at the Royal Academy of Arts, he called for the legalisation of cocaine and marijuana and insisted that years of drug-taking had not harmed him in any way. But, he hastened to add, he had never indulged in stimulants when working because "drugs and art don't mix". "You have to be very clear-headed," he said. Drugs made you "too pleased with everything", and to create great work "you have to struggle". The comments came just a day after the Government issued a warning on the dangers facing young people from a flood of heroin and cocaine. Posing for the media in front of his panoramas of the Grand Canyon, which will be unveiled for the first time in Britain at the Summer Exhibition from June 7 to August 15, he confessed to a regular "joint" with a glass of whisky in the evening. Dismissing government policy as naive, he said: "They are trying to ban cigarette advertising. They don't advertise marijuana and cocaine - and they seem to be doing quite well. "I remember Jack Straw in 1968 saying 'you can't legalise marijuana as we haven't got enough information'. Thirty years later, he's said exactly the same thing. I don't know what life has taught him, I've learnt quite a lot. I've smoked a lot of marijuana. It hasn't harmed me." He said that two close friends had died from alcohol rather than illegal substances. A Cabinet Office spokesman yesterday refuted Hockney's claims. She said: "We don't see it (drugs) as something recreational but something that wrecks lives on an individual and community level. There are degrees of drug misuse. At worst, it kills." The Royal Academy has devoted an entire room to Hockney this year, marking a departure for the Summer Exhibition. More than 1,000 works by established and unknown artists have been assembled for this year's exhibition. Hockney's space will feature a series of mirrors, angled so that his paintings, rather than the onlooker, are caught in the reflections. He said the Royal Academy had been "a bit sceptical" about the mirrored creation. "When they saw them, they agreed they worked," he said. The Bradford-born artist, one of the Royal Academy's most distinguished members, has visited the Grand Canyon every three months for the past ten years. From a series of studies and photographs, he has created paintings spread across a grid of dozens of small canvases. "I am drawn to it," he said. "You feel the space that can be defined by its edge." - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D