Altered States: Alcohol and Other Drugs in America
By Mark Swartz
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“Altered States: Alcohol and Other Drugs in America”–which originated in Rochester, New York, at the Strong Museum–presents the relationship between drugs and temperance as a tug-of-war–or, to use a more modern phrase, a mutual codependency. The curators’ juxtapositions of objects and images and their wall texts establish a distance from the drug wars depicted. At certain points in history the forces trying to keep people from getting high gain a little ground on the forces trying to get people high, but then a new drug comes along or society’s priorities change, and a new equilibrium is reached.
The slogans of contemporary antidrug campaigns appeared throughout the notebook where visitors were supposed to enter their comments on the use of Joe Camel in cigarette ads. Among proclamations of “Drugs Stink” and “All you need is God” were relatively articulate comments on the economic disadvantages of keeping drugs illegal and therefore creating a market for organized crime.
Perhaps because I’d just come from a show on drug culture that featured not a few psychedelic graphics, when I walked around the Terra I tended to focus less on the figures and more on their patterned surroundings: patterned rugs, wallpaper, and clothing everywhere you looked. Pauline Palmer’s canvas, My Studio, Provincetown, evokes a comfy domestic ideal by means of three different patterned rugs and a patterned blanket over the chair where the lone female figure is sitting (there’s also a fireplace complete with glowing embers). In Hall at Shinnecock, the American Impressionist William Merritt Chase renders a mother slouched in her chair as she watches her two daughters absorbed in some desultory game. By contrast, the patterned interior is opulent, vibrant.
