Nan Goldin - Art And Addiction

It’s interesting the way some successful artists reflect upon their lives.  Internationally renowned artist Nan Goldin had long berated herself for years of addiction, especially to opiates. “Every morning I’d wake up in hell, waking up to self-condemnation.  And then I’m taking two hours to get up because it’s so awful.”  These comments were made during her session with celebrated physician and addiction therapist Dr Gabor Mate.

Buzz and Nan at the Afterhours, New York City, 1980

Reading of her sessions with Mate, you’d swear she’d never been a ‘creative dynamo’ who has produced a vast body of powerful and distinctive art, exhibiting internationally to great acclaim.  “I’ve missed years of my life, I don’t have many more years to go.  I’ve spent most of my life addicted to drugs and as a result, know nothing.  My knowledge is very limited, I didn’t look in the mirror and deal with myself.  So much has been lost.”  She went on to say that she feels worthless and defective.

Rise and Monty Kissing, New York City, 1980

She was born Nancy Goldin into a middle class Jewish family in Boston in 1953.  She is the youngest of four children and was particularly close to her sister, Barbara, who from an early age rebelled against middle class American life.  This, in a climate of silence and denial.  Barbara spent time in institutions before committing suicide at the age of 18, when Nan was 11.  Speaking of Barbara, Goldin argues that in the early sixties, women who were sexual and angry were considered dangerous and outside the range of acceptable behavior.  She described her sister as being born at the wrong time with no tribe, no other people like her.  It’s argued that the gritty realism of Goldin’s work, the desire to tell it as it is has its roots in these early childhood experiences.

Trixie on the Cot, New York City, 1979

Goldin decided at an early age she would record her life and experiences “that no one could rewrite or deny”.  One of her closest friends was the photographer David Wojnarowicz (see my blog dated 8 May, 2020), and like him, she used photography as an act of resistance.  She moved to New York in 1979 and began producing photographs of those in her immediate environment.  Her most celebrated body of work is “Ballad of Sexual Dependency”, a project which began in the early 1980’s.  

In her critique of an exhibition based around ‘Ballad’, held at MOMA in 2016, Tasya Kudryk argues that Goldin had an intense relationship with her subjects whom she described as her family.  “The artist’s work captures an essential element of humanity that is transcendent of all struggles: the need to connect.”  Goldin claims it’s impossible to capture the essence of a person in a single image, instead she aims to “capture the swirl of identities over time.”  Her images include relationships in transition, of couples drifting together and then apart.  She doesn’t shy away from depicting violence, such as her self portrait showing the aftermath of a battering she received from a boyfriend that almost blinded her.  The message seemed to be that while sex can be a cure for isolation, it can be a source of alienation.

Nan, One Month After Being Battered, 1984

Ballad of Sexual Dependency has been described as a deeply personal visual diary narrating the struggle for intimacy and understanding between her friends, family and lovers.  The setting is mainly the hard-drugs subculture of New York’s lower east side.  (Interestingly, some former inhabitants  lament the gentrification of the area that has taken place recently.)  Goldin wants her work not to be seen in the context of observer, but as participant.  “Ballad” is now regarded as a contemporary classic, raising awareness around issues such as homosexuality and AIDS.  “Goldin's open, frank style of narration and dense colour make the viewer go beyond the surface of the photograph to encounter a subterranean intensity “- Kudryk.  Yet permeating these images is a sense of loss.  "I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost." - Goldin.

Nan and Dickie in the York Motel, New Jersey, 1980

Goldin acknowledges that her escape into substance use rescued her when she resorted to it at age 18, when going through a painful time in her life.  “Literally, addiction saved my life”, she told Mate.  Otherwise, she may have been driven to suicidal despair.  She wishes that the consequences weren’t so harsh - as other addicts do.  Mate argues that self-accusation is a relentless whip that spurs so many perfectionists to buckle down, do more, be better.  It needs to be seen for what it is - a callow voice that needs to be firmly, but quietly put in its place.

Nan and Brian in Bed, New York City, 1983

More recently, (in addition to dealing with her own addiction) Goldin has engaged in personal and collective activism against Purdue Pharma, manufacturers of the opioid OxyContin which has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.  Purdue marketed the product as being a less addictive opioid than other painkillers, whilst suppressing evidence to the contrary.  

Her particular targets in this campaign has been the Sackler family, who control Purdue, and her fame as an artist gave her a platform to raise the banner.  The Sacklers have promoted themselves as benevolent art philanthropists among other things, but Goldin was appalled at their callousness and inhumanity.  As a result of her campaigning, some of the world’s most prestigious galleries, including the Met in New York, no longer accept money from the Sacklers and have removed their logo from their buildings.

Tough Sharon

 When Mate asked her about her activism, Goldin responded “you need something bigger than yourself.”  In her case, it was the suffering of others, a situation she could rectify and which helps her to stay sober.  Mate believes that in standing up to a toxic culture, Goldin found herself. 

Hello, my name is Geoff. You may be interested to know that I’m a fulltime artist these days and regularly exhibit my work in Victoria, but particularly in Melbourne. You may wish to check out my work using the following link; https://geoffharrisonarts.com 

References; 

www.sleek-mag.com 

“The Myth of Normal”, Gabor Mate, 2022 

“The Lonely City”, Olivia Laing, 2016

Art Born Of Anger - David Wojnarowicz

“Hell is a place on earth.  Heaven is a place in your head.”  Thus wrote New York based artist David Wojnarowicz in his essay Shadow Of The American Dream.  He was a gay activist, print maker, painter, poet and photographer who died of complications from AIDS in 1992.

It was only in 2018 that the arts establishment decided to afford Wojnarowicz the recognition he deserved by staging a series of retrospectives of his work.  One of those exhibitions was held at the Whitney Museum in New York and was titled History Keeps Me Awake At Night.

Born in New Jersey in 1954, he began creating a body of work in the late ‘70’s.  But given his background it is remarkable that he made it to adulthood at all.  He was the youngest of 3 children, his mother was very young whilst the father was a violent alcoholic.  When David was 2 years old, his parents split up and after spending time with his siblings in a boarding house where beatings were frequent, they ended up with their father and his new wife in New Jersey, the universe of the neatly clipped lawn – according to Wojnarowicz, “where physical and psychic violence against women, gay people and children could be carried out without repercussions.” 

Chelsea Piers, the setting for much of Wojnarowicz’s photography

By the mid 1960’s, the Wojnarowicz children decided they’d had enough of their father’s violence and traced down their mother, but she had only a tiny apartment in Manhattan and was in no shape to be caring for 3 now troubled children due to having problems of her own.

David eventually ran away from home and found himself hustling in Times Square at the age of 15.  He also liked to draw and go to movies on his own.  He briefly returned to his mother’s apartment but she had already kicked out his siblings and at 17, he found himself on the streets for good.  He would sleep in boiler rooms or cars, some men were kind to him, some weren’t.  In 1973 his sister threw out a lifeline by offering him a bedroom in her apartment.

Wojnarowicz, Self Portrait 1983-85

In the late 70’s he began taking photographs of his friends wearing a mask of his kindred spirit Arthur Rimbaud in locations from his hustling days before he fell into the somewhat dysfunctional East Village art scene that included Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat and Peter Hujar.

Jacket worn by Wojnarowicz at a 1988 AIDS demonstration.

But it was the AIDS crisis that propelled Wojnarowicz’s work to prominence in the 1980’s as, one by one, he witnessed his friends and lovers die of a disease the Reagan Administration refused to name.  Art (and for that matter, sex) provided him with an avenue to escape the loneliness and isolation of his life – to escape the “prison of the self” as author Olivia Liang puts it in her book The Lonely City.

Wojnarowicz, Death Of American Spirituality 1987

In his wanderings around New York he often found himself at the Chelsea Piers which were left in a dilapidated state following the decline of shipping in the 1960’s.  It was here where his erotic and creative juices were fed and it was here where the ravages of the AIDS epidemic took hold.  Photography was to Wojnarowicz an act of taking possession, a way of making something visible and keeping it in storage.  He also produced some short films and his writings included the autobiography Close To The Knives (1991). The title says it all.  After he was diagnosed with AIDS in the late 80’s, his work took on a more political edge and he became involved in public debates around medical research and funding, morality and censorship in the arts, and the legal rights of artists.

Wojnarowicz, One Day This Kid 1990

According to Laing, 66,000 people died of AIDS in New York City alone between 1981 and 1996 when combination therapies became available.  People were sacked from their jobs and rejected by their families, patients were left on hospital trolleys (that’s if they were able to be admitted in the first place).  Nurses refused to treat them, funeral parlours to bury them and politicians and religious leaders blocked funding and education.

Wojnarowicz, Green Head 1982

In Close To The Knives Wojnarowicz wrote “My rage is really about the fact that when I was told I had contracted this virus it didn’t take me long to realize I had contracted a diseased society.”   He died 22 July, 1992 with his lover and family beside him.  The expression triumph in the face of adversity is a tediously overused cliché, yet it seems to describe his life.  In spite of everything he went through, he was able to so intensely and eloquently express his inner most feelings through a variety of media.  And act as a passionate spokesman on behalf of others.

Chelsea Piers

References;

The Guardian

The Lonely City – Olivia Laing, Picador Press, 2016