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."

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