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| "Pearblossom Highway," David Hockney photocollage, 1986 |
British-born, California-residing artist David Hockney has died at age 88, making him another long-living, productive marijuana smoker.
His death came nine months after the close of a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, reports the NY Times. "But even at that point, he was not finished. Working out of his studio in London, using a wheelchair, his health failing, he continued to paint." Best known for his poolside scenes and double portraits that celebrated the Southern California sunlight, Hockney worked in many media, including photography and iPads.
Born in 1937, the year marijuana was effectively made illegal in the US, Hockney earned a scholarship to a local art school at a young age and in 1959, he enrolled at the Royal College of Art in London. Seeing a major Picasso exhibition at the Tate Gallery the following year cemented his interest in art, and cubism (which was developed after Picasso tried cannabis).
Hockney came out as gay when he was 23, seven years before Britain decriminalized homosexual acts. He took the occasion of his exhibit at London's Royal Academy of Arts in the summer of 1999 to call for the legalization of marijuana. "I remember Jack Straw [UK's home minister] 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."
The artist said he smoked a regular "joint" with a glass of whiskey in the evening. 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." Drugs made you "too pleased with everything," he said, and to create great work "you have to struggle." (Source: Dalya Alberge, HOCKNEY SAYS DRUGS ARE FINE BUT NOT FOR ART, The Times (UK), May 27, 1999.)
"He is a big supporter of California’s decision to legalise cannabis," says a 2020 The Times article that interviewed Hockney saying, “I always assumed they kept marijuana illegal because of the power of the alcohol lobby. That’s their competition. But the alcohol lobby has become less powerful, and of course there are lots of people now in their seventies or eighties who’ve smoked marijuana for 40 or 50 years. And they know it’s harmless.” He told The Times he smokes it himself, "not when he works, but in the evening to relax." Reportedly, he had a California Medical Marijuana card. He was also a chain cigarette smoker and staunch pro-tobacco campaigner. In 2005, he fought to stop a ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants.
