I’ve been very interested in Dali recently, and he’s emerged as my favorite artist. I recently bought a book of his art, and in it it talks about his’Paranoiac Critical Method’. Essentially he created hallucinations in his head (without the use of drugs) and reproduced them in painting. He did struggle with mental illness through many stages of life, and his work can be so inventive that it would surprise me if he never smoked marijuana or did any other psychoactive drugs during his lifespan. So, is there any evidence suggesting he did?
Well, he did say “I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.” No idea if he ever did drugs, but it certainly doesn’t seem to have been a major focus.
Thanks, I didn’t mean if he ever used drugs; I don’t really care if he smoked pot at a party once or twice or something. More if he used drugs regularly or recreationally, or for motivation for his artwork.
It seems evident to me that he mostly received visions deliberately without the use of drugs, but I was wondering if there was a point that he did resort to real hallucinations with LSD, psilocybin, marijuana, etc. to gain motivation for his work. (If he ever did, it would be neat to compare his “drug” work with his Paranoiac Method work.)
Dail penned a book in 1948 titled: 50 secretes of magic craftsmanship.
(Dover paperback, English translation) In this book, Dail waxes surrealistically, at length, about his painting methods and the source of his extraordinary visions. His writing is very funny at times. Anyhow by reading between the lines, I gather he was probably skilled at what we now call lucid dreaming and self-hypnosis. In other words he used mediation techniques of his own invention, combined with his God given, genius and artistic talent.
I doubt very much that he bothered with hallucinogenic drugs, because Dail, being a narcissist, egomaniac and braggart, would see LSD tripping as a step backwards, lessening his great powers of imagining.
At any rate, true psyidellic art can be found all over the web, it tends to be not very good, colorful mandalas, dancing goblins and the like.