Addiction 020713 uk hd2

BOOK N째3

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ADDICTION

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All the artists cited in this text are on The Red List. We have included references to their work and contact information in line with The Red List’s commitment to provide visual inspiration without making a profit. Anyone who wants to extend these ideas commercially can do so through our references. Our aim is to open up different avenues of exploration to create new links with contemporary creativity.

BOOK N°3

“Oh, who will narrate to us the whole history of narcotics!

– It is almost the history of ‘culture,’ the so-called higher culture!”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Le Gai Savoir.

Fever, (with Anne Vyalitsyna), Alix Malka for Numéro, December 2002

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CONTENTS /4 /11 /60 /76 /92

about us Deciphering References Stories interview

ADDICTION: INHERITED FROM 1960S COUNTERCULTURE, IT IS A CONCEPT LINKED TO THE EMERGENCE OF ROCK MUSIC, SEXUAL LIBERATION AND DRUG /6

USE (“SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL”).

ADDICTION IS A SYMBOL OF INTENSITY, PERFORMANCE AND DANGER; IT EMBODIES VALUES THAT BECOME EVEN MORE “HEROIC” BECAUSE THEY CAN KILL,

AS THEY DID TO THE “FOREVER 27” CLUB. SINCE THE 1990S, THE FASHION AND LUXURY WORLDS HAVE REALIZED THE ATTRACTION OF ADDICTION AND ITS GUARANTEES OF YOUTH, PANACHE AND THE “BEAUTY OF THE DEVIL.” FAMOUS AND PRESTIGIOUS EXAMPLES OF THIS INCLUDE OPIUM (1977) AND POISON (1985), AS WELL AS THE PERFUME

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MOST DIRECTLY LINKED TO THIS MYTHOLOGY OF ADDICTION: DIOR ADDICT, BORN IN 2001 UNDER JOHN GALLIANO. NOW ACCEPTED, /8

ADDICTION IS NO LONGER IN HIDING; IT IS NO LONGER SHAMEFUL. LIKE ALL COUNTERCULTURE CONCEPTS, ROCK ADDICTION CAN BE DOMESTICATED TO THE POINT THAT IT LOSES ITS SUBVERSIVE ELEMENT AND SO ITS VALUE.

SO WHERE IS ADDICTION TODAY? HOW CAN IT BE VISUALIZED SO IT NOT ONLY RETAINS ITS POWER, BUT IS ALSO NOURISHED WITH NEW AND POWERFUL MEANINGS? /9

DECIPHER

RING

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Deciphering

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ADDICTION

Phillip Toledano for More, October 2011

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Deciphering

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THE ORIGINS

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The term “addiction” comes from the Latin verb addicere, meaning “to say.”

It was a legal term that meant, according to a legal dictionary, the “giving up to a creditor of his debtor’s person by a magistrate.” So the word presupposes the suffering of being reduced to the status of an object, one in the grip of a toxic substance or alienating and compulsive behavior.

From the point of view of the “physical economy,” the word for drug addiction in French – toxicomanie – stresses the idea of poisoning, of hurting oneself, while the English term transmits the Latin idea of addicts as slaves to a single idea: escaping their mental torment. The term “addict” also refers to ideas of an unequal struggle within a person.

The object of addiction is invested with beneficial qualities, even love: an object of pleasure to be taken at any time to alleviate otherwise unbearable emotional states. As such, it is seen as good, at least to begin with; even, in the extreme version, as something that gives life meaning. Brands use the concept in this sense, of course, but the transgressive and scandalous version of addiction is as least as powerful.

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1. Hors Cadre, (with Anja Rubik), Camilla Akrans for NumĂŠro, October 2012 2. Sleep no more, (with Natalia Vodianova), Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott for W, December 2012 3. Quotography

by Wordboner, 2012

Deciphering

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1. Fawnicate, (with Malgosia Bela), Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott for Love, issue 8, winter 2012/2013 2. Oliviero Toscani for United Colors of Benetton, 1990 3. Keith Richards, Francesco Carrozzini for L’Uomo Vogue Italia, January 2009

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TODAY, SOFTCORE ADDICTION

After a trashy version of addiction that was linked to porn-chic and which underlined the link between drugs and sexual inhibition, it seems that brands are today playing with more softcore addictions, linked to substances that might be addictive but aren’t harmful.

It’s a danger-free addiction offered by offering beneficial substitute happy pills. The 2012 ad for Dior Addict illustrated this domesticated addiction: Daphné Groeneveld as Brigitte Bardot in sunny, summery Saint-Tropez. For its most recent make-up collection, the brand created a wonderful world of sweetness and fun. The concept of addiction has, in a decade, moved towards the sin of gluttony by offering lip gloss and nail varnish to be used without limit in the way

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a child would eat a bag of candy without the need or desire to stop. Dior showed its color range in the form of brightly colored Smarties, lip glosses as lollipops, nail varnishes as marshmallows, and the whole Dior Addict universe lit in bright colors.

Dior then reinforced this childish world through themes of play and fun, represented by a crowd smiling and winking. It is a sweetened, childish addiction with a regressive attitude that can’t give up its cuddly toys. Sephora also took this step in its most recent campaign by showing a young woman with a pink pacifier. Into this category of addiction also come all the objects that we can’t put down – smartphones, tablets, and so on.

Deciphering

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1. In a window of Prestes Maia 911 Building, Julio Bittencourt, 2006

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2. Phillip Toledano for the New York Times Magazine, December 2009 3. Into the Woods, (with Doutzen Kroes), Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott for W, August 2007

“The addict is often someone who is easily overwhelmed by his or her emotions and who tries to control them in any way possible,� explains psychiatrist Philippe Jeammet.

Addiction feeds itself on our insecurities, our desire to find a feeling of control.

Addiction is a way of fighting depression; its takes the edge off internal conflicts by replacing them with compulsive behavior.

Ideas of addiction and depression spread in the 1970s and went hand in hand.

Both bear witness to a difficulty with rules and conflict, being in control of the self.

Depression is a tragedy of inadequacy.

It is the familiar shadow of a human being without a guide, tired of attempting to become him- or herself and tempted to self-support to the point of compulsion using products and behaviors. But just as the addictive product like a comfort blanket instantly generates the end of suffering, so this ecstatic relief is followed by a craving.

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Deciphering

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SOUL OF A CHILD

What provides the link between these two visions of addiction – its rock and its “comfort blanket” version – is youth.

In the sense that it is a sign of insecurity and a need for soothing, it symbolizes the immaturity in each of us, an incapacity to become an adult. Whether rock or sweet, addicts are young, compulsive, regressive and incapable of managing their desires over the long term. They see pleasure in the short term without worrying about tomorrow. So addiction is at the source of a “youthism”

not of the body but the soul.

It’s not a normal experience to sing in front of 60,000 people, how would you not take drugs? Ask Robbie Williams.

You might also say that it’s not normal always to feel the same feelings, so how would you not take drugs?

“Sex and drugs and rock’n’roll?

When you’re in your 20s in a rock group, you try everything! You’re like a kid in a sweet shop! You don’t whether you’re coming or going.” Brian Molko, Placebo

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1. Hope and Fear, Phillip Toledano, 2004 2. Addict at Birth, Desire Obtain Cherish, 2012

Deciphering /22

FEELINGS

Azim Haidaryan (with Margaryta Senchylo), Velvet Italia, October 2008

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Deciphering

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EXPLORATION

Rock addiction has its stage presence, as well as ideas of physical and moral decline, which makes it not exactly the same as the ideas of post-Romantic addiction that struck artistic circles in the 19th century. Among the members of the celebrated French “Club of Haschischins” were Charles Baudelaire, Eugène Delacroix and Alexandre Dumas.

This idea of addiction was forever judged by the richness of the creation it engendered. (It also benefits from a certain “freshness” as it is further away from us and we are not contemporaries of these stars.) Not forgetting that, unlike rock stars, few poets died from overdoses.

In Greek mythology, addiction is already thought of in terms of its duality: positive and negative. The figure of Dionysus, god of wine, tragedy and comedy, makes

intoxication an inspiring force of creativity: addiction becomes a virtuous circle, not leading to death but leaving it behind thanks to states of transcendence that induce creativity.

While being a psychosocial risk that threatens users’ mental health and their place in society, drugs nevertheless offer artistic health as they guarantee the exploration of unknown feelings and sensorial-mental experimentation.

So post-Romantic 19th-century poets wanted to break the rules, to no longer fit in, and to express themselves as vectors of individual, unique experiences.

The time of poetic conventions and reshuffling the rules was over!

Poets wanted to be like Baudelaire and “go to the bottom of the Unknown to find the New!”

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1. Le désespéré, Gustave Courbet, 1843-1845 2. Mile Long Drawing (Two Chalk Lines), Walter De Maria, 1968 3. Infinity Mirrored Room Filled with the Brilliance of Life, Yayoi Kusama, 2001 4. Box, Pierre Baëlen, 2011 5. Ocean Beach, Jim Denevan, 2012 6. Human Structures, Jonathan Borofsky, 2008

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Deciphering 1.

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1. Men Of Good Fortune (“Infra” series), Richard Mosse, 2011 2. Untitled#172 (Buffy eyes), Jeff Burton, 2003

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TRIPS

The “toxic” was never really the decisive element. Instead, it was the search for a change of state that assumed different forms according to the drug – opium, hashish, the “fairy” morphine, cocaine, mescaline – and its users: break free of the shackles of time and space, widen human experience beyond the limits of rational thought, rediscover a lost oneness, access an unknown pleasure (the “artificial paradises”), and so on. Even if the breadth of the phenomenon as we are trying to describe it here goes far beyond the limits of literature, it is nevertheless writers who manage to describe it best: Théophine Gautier, Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry,

Jean Cocteau, Joë Bousquet, Walter Benjamin, Antonin Artaud, Ernst Jünger, Thomas De Quincey, and Henri Michaux.

Seeing differently, opening the doors of perception, changing light, color and speed. Seeing as you’ve never seen before, feeling what you’ve never felt, addiction is not simply a pose but also a desire for transformation. “When I plant a needle in my vein, and I’ll tell you, things aren’t quite the same,” sang Lou Reed in Heroin (originally written in 1964).

While Jim Morrison chose the name for his band as a homage to Aldous Huxley’s 1954 book The Doors of Perception.

Deciphering

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THE LIGHT, ALDOUS HUXLEY “I SAW THE BOOKS, BUT WAS NOT AT ALL CONCERNED WITH THEIR POSITIONS IN SPACE. WHAT I NOTICED, WHAT IMPRESSED ITSELF UPON MY MIND WAS THE FACT THAT ALL OF THEM GLOWED WITH LIVING LIGHT AND THAT IN SOME THE GLORY WAS MORE MANIFEST THAN IN OTHERS.”

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Du phénomène de la bibliothèque, Joseph Kosuth, 2006

Deciphering JIMI HENDRIX “PURPLE HAZE ALL IN MY BRAIN / LATELY THINGS JUST DON’T SEEM THE SAME.”

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We are animals (Campagne Wranglers), Jeff Burton, 2010

Deciphering AT SPEED, WALTER BENJAMIN “THERE CAN BE […] VERITABLE BURSTS OF IMAGES, INDEPENDENT OF ALL OTHER OBSESSIONS AND THE POLARIZATION OF OUR ATTENTION. […] IF TRUTH BE TOLD, THE PRODUCTION OF IMAGES CAN BRING TO LIGHT THINGS SO EXTRAORDINARY AND SO FLEETINGLY WITH SUCH SPEED THAT WE CAN NO LONGER MANAGE TO INTEREST OURSELVES IN ANYTHING ELSE, SIMPLY BECAUSE OF THESE IMAGES’ BEAUTY AND SINGULARITY.”

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Madonna (MDNA Booklet), Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, 2012

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Deciphering HENRI MICHAUX “LINES PULLULATE. THE CITIES WITH A THOUSAND PALACES, THE PALACES WITH A THOUSAND TOWERS, HALLS WITH A THOUSAND COLUMNS […] RUINS, FAKE TREMBLING RUINS. A MESS OF TANGLED ORNAMENTS […] SLIPPING IN EVERYWHERE, EVEN INTO A GROUP OF RUNNERS YOU WERE LOOKING AT AND SUDDENLY, FOR NO REASON, THEY RIBBON UP, SNAKE AROUND, ROLL THEMSELVES UP IN LOOPS, IN LOOPS OF LOOPS, IN UNSTOPPABLE SPIRALS…”

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Big Clouds, Mitch Dobrowner, 2010

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Deciphering

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SHARPNESS, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE “IT IS, IN FACT, AT THIS PERIOD OF THE INTOXICATION THAT IS MANIFESTED A NEW DELICACY, A SUPERIOR SHARPNESS IN EACH OF THE SENSES: SMELL, SIGHT, HEARING, TOUCH JOIN EQUALLY IN THIS ONWARD MARCH; THE EYES BEHOLD THE INFINITE; THE EAR PERCEIVES ALMOST INAUDIBLE SOUNDS IN THE MIDST OF THE MOST TREMENDOUS TUMULT. IT IS THEN THAT THE HALLUCINATIONS BEGIN; EXTERNAL OBJECTS TAKE ON WHOLLY AND SUCCESSIVELY MOST STRANGE APPEARANCES; THEY ARE DEFORMED AND TRANSFORMED. THEN THE AMBIGUITIES, THE MISUNDERSTANDINGS, AND THE TRANSPOSITIONS OF IDEAS! SOUNDS CLOAK THEMSELVES WITH COLOR; COLORS BLOSSOM INTO MUSIC.”

Hope and Fear, Phillip Toledano, 2004

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Deciphering

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1 & 2. Quotography

by Wordboner

MARCEL PROUST “THE REAL VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY CONSISTS NOT IN SEEKING NEW LANDSCAPES, BUT IN HAVING NEW EYES.”

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Deciphering GEORGE HARRISON “SOMEHOW MARIJUANA FOCUSES YOUR ATTENTION BETTER ON THE MUSIC. SO YOU CAN HEAR IT CLEARER, AT LEAST, THAT’S THE FEELING I HAD.”

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The Farm, Anish Kapoor, 2010

Deciphering

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THE PANACEA, THOMAS DE QUINCEY “I WAS NECESSARILY IGNORANT OF THE WHOLE ART AND MYSTERY OF OPIUM-TAKING, AND WHAT I TOOK I TOOK UNDER EVERY DISADVANTAGE. BUT I TOOK IT – AND IN AN HOUR – OH, HEAVENS! WHAT A REVULSION! WHAT AN UPHEAVING, FROM ITS LOWEST DEPTHS, OF INNER SPIRIT! WHAT AN APOCALYPSE OF THE WORLD WITHIN ME! THAT MY PAINS HAD VANISHED WAS NOW A TRIFLE IN MY EYES […] HERE WAS A PANACEA, A φαρμακον FOR ALL HUMAN WOES; HERE WAS THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS.”

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A Private World, (with Sunniva Stordahl), Tim Walker for Vogue Italia, November 2008

Deciphering

SENSATION MORE THAN EMOTION

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It would seem that in addiction, there is also a happiness to be felt under the influence of something rare, banned and not shared by all. The illusion of living under different laws to other people, of having escaped the majority.

The feeling replaces emotion. According to psychoanalysis, one of the goals of addictive behavior is to free yourself of emotional states of all types. Hence the idea that the addict is close to autism, addiction as solitude.

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche builds a bridge between Dionysus and hubris and named the idea “Dionysian.�

It is an esthetic position linked to drunkenness and expressing human excess.

The Dionysian is ecstasy, forgetting the self, frenzy, the release of primitive urges. The Dionysian resembles everything that comes from the depths and the unconscious, such as cruelty, rage, and uncontrolled sexuality. Addiction could be a version of this excessive position, as an obsessive fixation, a loss of self and alienation towards an object.

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Talisman Blues, Alix Malka, 2004

Deciphering

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TOMORROW ADDICTION

Femme Fatale, (with Sasha Pivovarova), Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott for Vogue Paris, October 2011

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Deciphering

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1. Portrait from the series “Chrysalide,�

Guillaume Amat, 2007 2. Cold Stream, Cy Twombly,1966

THE CREATIVE OBSESSION

Greek mythology illustrates the nature of addiction through ideas of repetition and punishment: Sisyphus eternally pushing his rock up a hill; the Danaides forever filling their leaky jar. The repetition of these acts is like an incessant refrain of existence, embodying this fundamental aspect of addiction: obsession.

The active principle at the heart of many major artworks, obsession is not simply punishment, but also a method of creation. Between obsession and addiction lies a corner, the redirection of a desire that can no longer live without, which always returns to drink from the same source, has the same necessity to be expressed.

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Deciphering 2.

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1. La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue des Lauves, Paul Cézanne, 1906

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5. La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, Paul Cézanne, 1906

6. Black, Red and Black, 2. Untitled (detail), Mark Rothko,1968 (Black, Red Over Black on Red) (detail), Mark Rothko, 1964 7. No.12,(Black on Dark Sienna on Purple) 3. Yayoi Kusama (detail), Mark Rothko, 1960 and her installation Fireflies on the Water, Jason Schmidt, 2002 4. La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, Paul Cézanne, 1895

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THE PRODUCTS OF OBSESSION

To each artist his obsession and with it, the road taken that leads to an unpremeditated result, the unmastered consequence of a relentless restarting, of a quest that cannot find its aim.

Just think of Paul Cézanne and Mont Saint-Victoire. More than 87 paintings (44 oils, 43 watercolors); a vision that evolved from the figurative to finish in abstraction, as if his eye had become tired or that he had seen beyond to something else. “Time and reflection change little by little our vision and at last understanding comes to us,” the painter wrote to Émile Bernard in 1905. Mark Rothko spent his whole career combining colored rectangles, but his final works, the socalled “dark paintings,” brought more somber colors – browns, grays and blacks.

They all reflected an internal mood, one

increasingly purified and hungry for a certain spirituality, that of the end of the 1950s. Rothko’s obsession, his addiction, appears to go hand in hand with the exhaustion of the painter and the object, an exhaustion of energy and color, and seems to confirm the relationship between addiction and self-destruction.

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama presents her celebrated dots as a hallucination.

“I saw the first aged 10 and I still see them,” she has said. The story has become a legend: the dots appeared while she was looking at a flowery tablecloth and remained imprinted on her retina while she looked at the ceiling. The myth also presents her “madness” as a springboard for her creativity. Indeed, she has lived since the late 1970s in a psychiatric hospital in Japan, while continuing to work.

Deciphering THE COLLECTION

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Purifying, refining destroying the material.

These obsessions can be found in a formalist like Steve Jobs, tyrannically worried about a thing done well and in a minimalist way, of the wiping away of the apparent technology to attain a sort of visual perfection, the absolute design of a functional object. Jobs was also the type of person who picked up the growing addictions of Californian counterculture in which he grew up: drugs, Buddhism, computers. His esthetic creed: remove the traces of human intervention by eliminating the assembly, by presenting objects as single piece, without joints, so organic they appear natural. It is one of contemporary design’s addictions, one of its creative drivers whose ultimate expression is the monochrome.

If obsession is proof of purity, then it becomes the opposite of compromise.

Artists can reply to a commission, compromise with the constraints of a brand, submit to the laws of the market, if they can return to or continue their obsession, the pure.

Obsession guarantees health and takes the place of a signature.

Next to the obsessed artist are the unrelenting collectors.

Men or women of taste, they search the world for the piece that will enrich their addictive and never-finished collection. A collection promotes the idea of having an esthetic, and opposes the museum and the gallery, contemplation and acquisition, a vision and money. Because in the same way that you can buy anything, you can collect anything, including unlisted objects and others yet to be invented. But what collectors really want to track down is the unique piece, the thing that no one else has or will have. Like predators before their prey, they are ready to pounce.

It’s an attitude reminiscent of erotic collectors, Don Juan, Casanova or their female versions: a person filled with insatiable desire, showing off their victories and their notches on the bedpost to reveal the breadth of their conquests.

Yet even a collection founded on a serial and cumulative urge is more than simply a series of the same thing. It has changes of directions, rough edges, disruptions that are noticeable and create an emotion.

Which makes a collection fertile ground for narratives that demand the sideways step, the element that breaks ranks.

THE INFINITE

Traditional collections in their complete version are presented horizontally, but tomorrow’s collections will perhaps take the vertical form of the wall.

A wall of text and images. A restricted space to welcome the largest possible number, like a data center. Virtual, immaterial objects, sublime in the sense that they have a relationship with transcendence and the spiritual. Objects of infinitesimal volume, but which are ultra-concentrated, ultra-dense.

1. Google data center in Berkeley County, South Carolina, Connie Zhou 2. Fame, (Lady Gaga), Steven Klein, 2012 3. A Man Of Distinction, (with Caroline Trentini), Steven Klein for Vogue US, March 2009 4. Designer Drugs, YSL, Desire Obtain Cherish, 2012

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Deciphering

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Kiss Me Kate, (with Kate Moss and her bridesmaids), Mario Testino for Vogue US, September 2011

REHAB

Rehab takes an effort of retention, giving up, working on the self to suppress, gain control and forget. Rehab means inner purification, a sort of penitence that will reestablish health , simplicity, autonomy, a distancing of evil. Reforming life, changing life, a second life: a renaissance.

Not to mention talking about the topography of celebrity rehab: the secluded spot, a luxury retreat, away from any harmful influences. The place of detoxification is associated with ideas of repentance, cleansed souls, purification. So it can be seen as a way to religiously interpret the idea of addiction as a stain on the soul, a sin that the human creature can buy back with an extreme effort of will. After years of excess reported by the press, it was no accident that Kate Moss got married in a bucolic, healthy setting surrounded by blond children with innocent smiles. After addiction comes redemption, which is also another way of telling the next chapter in the story.

IF MARKETING NOW OFFERS THE ADDICTION STAGE, THEN THE DETOX STAGE, WHEN WILL IT GIVE US THE RELAPSE STAGE?

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Deciphering

1. Andy Warhol, Weegee, 1967 2. Decades, Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin for Vogue Paris, August 2009

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DIVISION, MULTIPLICATION

One part wants the product of addiction, the other doesn’t. If you talk of addiction, you talk of latent conflict: a part of me that gives itself over to addiction while the other watches, powerless and disapproving.

To admit to being an addict is to admit to this doubleness, a line of division, a split self.

“Society used to value self-control,” says sociologist Michel Maffesoli.

“Today, postmodern humans have rediscovered their instincts, their passions and, deep down, their animal nature.”

On the other hand, Albert Camus defines man in The First Man: “A man, he restrains himself.” The slippery slope has taken over from self-control. But look closer and something else is happening.

After the intensity of the addictive pleasure, the rest is flat, empty, without interest and depressing. Hence the link between addiction and the depression.

On top of this moral conflict that splits the self, there is another division, between

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all or nothing. This division, this binary opposition seems to characterize the rich and famous more even more than others.

The price paid to be a star is addiction.

Fame can only be borne with psychotropics.

You can only be at the summit by walking along the edge of the abyss. No heaven without hell. Addiction is a way to dig deeper into the subject, the icon, the public figure. It makes thing more complex, tells a secret, a depth, shadows, a past, a eternal fight between good and evil in each of us.

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Deciphering

CONCLUSION

Post-rock addiction is dead, long live addiction! A symbol of transgression, it gives brands and messages the twist that makes them desirable and satisfies the desire for freedom of a public that refuses to dance like sensible children or act as a role model. Whether it comes out of the rock or the wider artistic scene, addiction can renew itself and suggest other ideas. A metaphor of consumption and advertising, a stinging version of supply and demand, it means that what makes the consumer living and exciting – desire – can be followed. In the same way that the urge to live is nourished by a death wish, that love carries in it the seeds of hate,

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SO ADDICTION SPREADS A VISION OF DESIRE THAT IS NOT WITHOUT RISK, WITHOUT SATISFACTION, OR WITHOUT THE THREAT OF SOLITUDE AND DESTRUCTION. IN FACT, THAT’S WHAT MAKES IT AN EMINENTLY DYNAMIC AND VITAL IDEA. 1. Academy Model, (with Lara Stone), Steven Klein for W, September 2009 2. Fame, (Lady Gaga), Steven Klein, 2012

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REFE ENCE

RES

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TRASHY ADDICTION / CANDY ADDICTION

GENERAL PUBLIC / CELEBRITIES

RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW / TOMORROW & FOREVER

PAIN / PANACEA

CREATION / DESTRUCTION

RECOVERY / RELAPSE

References

/74 Aether, Nicholas Alan Cope

Pastel Pastry, (with Masha P.), Amber Gray for Marie-Claire China, February 2012

Fans at a Rolling Stones concert at Treasure Island Gardens, London, Canada, Western Archives, 1965

Keith Richards on tour in the US, Ethan Russel, 1972

Police Shields, (Anti-war Protest, Los Angeles), Desire Obtain Cherish,

Stranger than Paradise, (with Tilda Swinton), Tim Walker for W, May 2013

From the series “Interiors (Foreclosed Homes)”, Todd Hido

A Perfect Day, Elise…, Tereza Vlckova, 2007

Pablo Picasso (Draws with light), Gjon Mili, archives Life Magazine, 1949

Good Kate Bad Kate, (with Kate Moss), Steven Klein for W, March 2012

Paradise II, Claudia Rogge, 2001

Traktile II, Claudia Rogge, 2009

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STORI

IES

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Stories

CHIC In the 1990s, brands such as Calvin Klein promoted a look that became known as “heroin chic”: young, thin, androgynous girls with dark rings under their eyes.

The pretty junkie was on trend and was set up in contrast to the voluptuous beauty of Cindy Crawford or Claudia Schiffer.

(Films like Trainspotting and Pulp Fiction helped this movement.) Apart from the look, addicts are chic when they’re not trashy, because they look experienced, haunted and romantic.

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1. Channing Tattum, Jeff Burton for Interview, 2009 2. Stamen, Nicholas Alan Cope, 2012

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FEAR “There is an evil against which opium is sovereign and that evil is called fear.”

From the age of 19, Antonin Artaud was gripped by huge panic attacks that would hold him “entire days and nights until dawn in the grip of a veritable suffocation.” To fight these states of dread, he was prescribed laudanum, an opium-based drug.

Artaud saw opium not as a pleasure or the expression of a desire for new experiences, but rather as a necessity to deal with life; it was never a temptation but rather a “remedy.”

For the man whose prey is himself, opium becomes a pharmakon – a substance that is both remedy and poison.

Stories

FLASH A WORD TO DESCRIBE THE TRIP AND THE FOG OF DEREALIZATION THAT ENVELOPS THE USER AT THE MOMENT OF TAKING THE DRUG. A FLASH THAT’S A FLARE, AN INTERIOR DAZZLE IMPOSSIBLE TO RESIST, AN INTENSE EUPHORIA.

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INJECTIONS “When one loses one’s good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. […] Youth is the only thing worth having,” wrote Oscar Wilde in The Portrait of Dorian Gray.

Cosmetic medicine – which consists primarily of injecting substances into the face to reduce wrinkles – is by definition about repetitive acts.

That is the way it works. This repetition culminates in a superposition of different products one on top of another, indiscriminately. The spiral of new injections is almost automatic. Obsessed patients hunt their wrinkles with precision and this discovery brings with it the repetitive gesture. This hunt, linked to the act of injecting, even when done by an expert, is one of our modern addictions.

1. Explosion A, Christian Weber, 2010 2. Packaging for "Habit", Morey Talmor, 2010

Stories

JEAN COCTEAU It was during his second bout of rehab in 1928 that Jean Cocteau began writing Opium, an essay accompanied by tormented drawings that tried to give a visual equivalence to the changes in perception caused by the opiate. It was at this moment that his tubular figures, inspired by the shape of a pipe, first appeared, and “cannibalized” all his representations of the real. But the motif of an opium smoker popped up again in the work of the poet, who went back to rehab in 1933 and 1944. Opium, he wrote, brought “an extreme siesta” and was “femme fatale, pagodas, lanterns.”

Opium is what rests and inspires, a muse who makes you sleep and wakes you up in another world, a creative inspiration.

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LISTS

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The list is the written version of addiction: an itch for its compiler that never diminishes and grows endlessly. Each crossed-off item is immediately replaced by a new one. Anything can appear on it, without hierarchy or worry of differentiation. Randomly. Compulsive ritual, list making has become a literary genre and a societal fad that sees everything transformed into a Top 10 and Top 5.

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1. L'homme à tout faire, Philippe Halsman, 1949 2. Tokyo 21st century, Metz & Racine for Dazed & Confused 3 & 4. Yellow Submarine, George Dunning, 1968

LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS The official version: John Lennon said that his son Julian, aged four in 1967, comes back from school with a drawing, which, he says, shows one of his classmates called Lucy O’Donnell. The little boy describes the picture to his father and says that it shows “Lucy, in the sky with diamonds.”

Later, Julian said, “I don’t know why I called it that or why it stood out from all my other drawings, but I obviously had an affection for Lucy at that age. I used to show Dad everything I’d built or painted

at school, and this one sparked off the idea.” (Lucy O’Donnell died on September 22, 2009, aged 46.) The unofficial version: the song’s title is a reference to LSD. Lennon explained many times that besides his son’s drawing, his chief inspiration for the surreal words were Lewis Carroll (especially Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, his two favorite childhood books) and popular 1950s and 1960s radio comedy The Goon Show (the line “Plasticine porters with lookingglass ties” is a direct reference). Whatever the truth, the song remains the symbol of psychedelia par excellence.

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POETRY AT THE ORIGIN OF ALL THESE NAMES, THE TRIP THAT MAKES THE PRODUCT MAGIC, POETIC, AND THE TABOO THAT MAKES IT NECESSARY TO FIND ALL THESE OTHER TERMS TO DESCRIBE A DRUG: ANGEL DUST (PCP); CRYSTAL METH (METHAMPHETAMINE); ICE (METHAMPHETAMINE); SNOW (COCAINE); STARDUST (COCAINE); SPEED (METHAMPHETAMINE).

POISON Poison was dreamed up in 1985 by Maurice Roger, the CEO of Parfums Dior; artistconsultant François-Marie Banier who found the name. Its creation and launch needed an investment of $50 million, but that was pretty much earned back within six months as the perfume became an instant global success, particularly in Japan.

1. Constellations, Grace Kim, 2012 2. Circe invidiosa, J. W. Waterhouse, 1892 3. Dior Poison Hyptnotic, (with Milla Jovivich), Jean-Baptiste Mondino, 1998

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The ad campaign that accompanied the launch was inspired by Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la bête and directed by Claude Chabrol, in collaboration with the House’s creative director. During the perfume’s first few weeks on sale, a bottle of Poison was sold every 50 seconds at Galeries Lafayette in Paris, and it even provoked a black market. People quickly became either pro and anti Poison, and certain New York restaurants even put up signs that read “No smoking, no Poison.”

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Stories

PRAYER Repetitive, fervent, vital to the believer in whom it creates a feeling of well-being. Couldn’t prayer, a regular appeal to the divine, also be an addictive gesture? Neuropsychology studies in Canada have shown that Carmelite nuns find themselves in a state of ecstatic fulfillment when praying.

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PURITY 2.

1. Crosses, Alexander Kent, 2008 2. Eric Degrange, for Optimum

The purity of heroin is estimated by its whiteness, and whiteness is all about lightness and the delicacy of powder.

Cocaine is sometimes called “snow.” The glue that’s sniffed is also white. In other words, the most hardcore substances are dressed up in the purest and most naive attributes. There is in addiction a sort of greed for original purity, of immaculate virginity and ultimate innocence. Or as Aldous Huxley put it, “I took my pill at eleven. An hour and a half later, […]

I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation – the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.” It’s a fantasy also found in the cosmetics world around ideas of absolute whiteness.

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RELAPSE An iconic beauty for more than 20 years, Kate Moss is an addictive figure.

A celebrated addict, she carries in her the shoots of danger and a beauty that nevertheless always comes out the winner. A phoenix from the flames, Kate Moss has known hell and now the heaven of her recent marriage.

A splendid oxymoron, she has escaped the dreadful fate of her rock-star friends, and is now the perfect embodiment of Diana Vreeland’s comment about Edie Sedgwick: “Lovely skin, but then I’ve never seen anyone on drugs that didn’t have wonderful skin.” But you’re never at peace with addiction that can return at any time to destroy the perfect image. Today she’s in heaven, but tomorrow?

SEX DRUGS AND ROCK’N’ROLL The title of Ian Dury’s 1977 song updated the ancient hedonist cry “Wine, women and song!” and set in stone rock’n’roll’s watchwords, driven by the urge and flaming desire found at its source.

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1. Edie Sedgwick, Jerry Schatzberg, 1966 2. Keith Richards, Tina Turner and David Bowie, Bob Gruen, NYC,1983 3. Mick Jagger, live at the Palladium, New York City, Bob Gruen, 1978 4. Jim Morrison, at the Cleveland Auditorium, George Shuba, 1968 5. Iggy Pop and David Bowie, 1970

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TALITHA GETTY

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During his Moroccan period, Yves Saint Laurent discovered a new muse in Talitha Getty, one who would leave a long-term mark on his world. The young, rich heiress was the embodiment of sexual freedom, drug use, urbane fantasy and a beauty that would today be called “hippie chic,” and the designer was inspired by her look.

Perfumers didn’t waste any time following this movement and began questioning centuries of French perfume lore.

Yves Saint Laurent spent five years working on Opium before it was unveiled in 1977 with its intoxicating scents of musk, vanilla, patchouli and sandalwood mixed with jasmine and ylang-ylang.

Bottle designer Pierre Dinard suggested to Saint Laurent a bottle shaped like an inro, the small bottle containing medicinal herbs and small pellets of opium that a samurai warrior would carry on his belt.

The designer loved the idea and his perfume was named Opium.

The perfume provoked, firstly, a scandal about its headline-worthy name.

An innocent bit of provocation for some; “intellectual pollution” and encouragement to debauchery for others. At the time perfume marketing was taking off and launch strategies were carefully crafted.

Yves Saint Laurent opened a new path with what might be called “toxicommunication.”

The tagline for Opium was “Pour celles qui s’adonnent à Yves Saint Laurent” (For those women who devote themselves to Yves Saint Laurent). The message was clear: Opium was an addictive perfume. A 1980s TV ad with Linda Evangelista even had the model searching an Asian city for her dose.

These elements made Opium a global fashion phenomenon as soon as it was launched in France. An instant hit, by Christmas that year the House had run out.

Despite a few voices raised against this immoral scent, it crossed borders and quickly became one of the brand’s biggest successes. Since December 2000, Opium has been banned in China, where the authorities worry that it will encourage drug taking. Not to mention the fact that in China opium has something of a history: the opium wars launched by the British in 1839 began China’s decline and Western dominance.

TRAINSPOTTING Seen by some as the Clockwork Orange of the 1990s, Danny Boyle’s 1996 hit was about the adventures of a group of addicts in a sinister Scotland. The term “trainspotting” comes from the people you see at the end of train platforms in Britain, noting down the names and numbers of trains entering the station (the film alludes to this pastime with Renton’s wallpaper).

It also came to mean someone obsessed by something meaningless, notably drugs and the details of every James Bond film (like Sickboy in the film). The film’s soundtrack was also a success, mixing famous songs by Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and New Order, with the best of Britpop (Pulp, Blur, Elastica).

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1. Talitha Getty, in her villa in Tangiers 2. Talitha Getty with Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent in Morocco

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3. Poster for Trainspotting, directed by Danny Boyle, 1996

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Interview

THE EXPERT Claudia Senik is a professor at Université Paris-Sorbonne and a researcher at the Paris School of Economics. She specializes in the economy of happiness and well-being.

Could you explain the concept of addiction in economics?

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The formalization of addiction in economics is based on the idea of the irreversibility of certain choices. Certain behaviors have a memory. The need to smoke and the pleasure of the last cigarette are not the same if in the past you smoked rarely, a lot, or not at all.

Basically, my level of general well-being and the pleasure that I take in consuming something addictive depend on the total quantity of this good, the stock, that I have taken in my life. If it’s a negative addiction, the more I take, the less I feel good, but the greater the pleasure I take in my last cigarette. Addictive goods, or addictive behaviors, create a link between individuals’ choices in the past, the present and the future.

That’s not the case with non-addictive goods.

Is it rational to take addictive goods?

It is possible to imagine that someone decides, in full knowledge of the facts, to take addictive goods, notably because they place little value in their future (anxiety) in relation to their present (pleasure).

The importance attached to the present moment in relation to the future plays a crucial role in addictive behaviors. But it can also be seen differently, for example, by recognizing a certain discontinuity of the subject, fragmented into a series of successive “me.” In each moment, only the present “me” is active and taking decisions that engage the future “me,” the “me” less important than the present. The present “me,” who is in control, finds in his present consumption a greater benefit than the total future cost of the consumption – because he places less value in the future

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Guillaume Canet, Vincent Flouret for Le Monde, 2007

“me” who will experience the future consequences of his actions.

In this version, the individual is not rational because he or she is not coherent; that is to say these successive “me” do not value time in the same way.

Could you talk to us about these different versions of “me”?

The idea is that each individual shelters an active “me” and a planning “me”: hot states linked to present feelings, and cold states that do not know feeling and are typical of future versions. Addiction is favored by the antagonism exacerbated by these contradictory entities.

Interview

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Brugge 1, Spencer Tunick, 2005

Why is the future not enough to rip the “me” away from its addiction?

Especially when it knows the future dangers?

One of the explanations would use the idea of “hyperbolic discounting,” that is to say the constant and extreme devaluation of the future, even the near future, in relation to the immediate present. There is a chasm between today and tomorrow, while between tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and in a week, there is a feeling of confusion, of general dissolving. This idea is especially important in understanding certain, apparently irrational behaviors. I’m ready to make all the good resolutions in the world as soon as they begin tomorrow.

What do you think of the current trend for people to declare themselves addicted to, say, the Internet, fashion or a TV series?

This kind of declaration seems to be about identity. Addiction creates a link between what I did yesterday and what I will do today and tomorrow. In that way, it defines me consistently and reassures me about identity, permanence and determination. And today, with our lack of religious or ideological beliefs, people are hungry for markers of identity, for strong resolutions. Addiction fills this role so well because it is, as an economist would say, “costly”; that is to say, it imposes a cost, monetary or not. When I give myself to addiction I renounce other things and I am the victim of a certain suffering – and that is a way of paying my tribute to my identity. It is even more precious because it has a cost; it is worth the cost.

Addictions to the Internet or fashion are banal, so how could they satisfy the individual who prefers to define him- or herself through ideas of difference and originality?

These are community identities: I’m an Internet addict like millions of other people, we form a group and I like that. It creates social links, like a religion without transcendence or rather: instead of transcendence there is an uncontrolled, irrational urge that is stronger than me and which brings us together. Not forgetting that genuinely dangerous addictions, even if they are shared, consist partly of bravado and a challenge that give you a certain panache and enhance your identity.

Claudia Senik, professor of economics at Université Paris-Sorbonne and Paris School of Economics.

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BY MAKING ALL OF US IMMORTAL ADDICTS WHO TAKE REGULAR SHOTS OF INTENSITY, OUR ERA GIVES US WINGS, MOVES DANGER FAR AWAY OR MAKES IT PHYSICALLY INOFFENSIVE. ADDICTION HAS BEEN DOMESTICATED AND NO LONGER SCARES PUBLIC OPINION,

WHICH MUST NOW LOOK ELSEWHERE FOR NEW DEMONS. WE SEE IN ADDICTION THE FREEDOM OF DESIRE, SELFEXPRESSION, AND A NEW SENSE OF COMMUNITY, WHILE CHOOSING TO IGNORE THE FATIGUE OF BEING ONESELF THAT IT CAN IMPLY.

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WE ARE TIRED

BY BEING HYPERCONNECTED, TIRED BY CONTINUAL LISTMAKING, TIRED

BY A FEAR OF THE VOID. YET THERE IS GOOD REASON TO THINK THAT SOON ADDICTION WILL HAVE HAD ITS TIME AND WILL BEGIN TO SHOW THE SAME SIGNS OF WEAKNESS

THAT EFFECTS ALL HYPERBOLE. WE HAVE TO FIND SOMETHING ELSE, OTHER VISIONS OF INTENSITY, OTHER NOTIONS OF LINGUISTIC EXCITEMENT, OTHER ILLUSIONS OF SHARING…

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