What happens when an artist decides to try drawing on drugs? Henri Michaux decided to try it, giving viewers a window into his mind under the influence. In 1955, he took the psychedelic drug mescaline for the first time. With the support of a psychiatrist, he experimented with the way the drug made him feel and how it could inspire new avenues of creative expression.

Mescaline is a non-addictive hallucinogenic drug made from the Mexican peyote cactus. In the 1950s, neuropsychiatrists at the Sainte-Anne hospital in Paris were researching its potential to treat psychiatric conditions.

Michaux first took mescaline with his publisher Jean Paulhan, and his friend, the poet Edith Boissonnas. After a few sessions, they dropped out of the informal experiment and he continued alone. He took the drugs at home in a carefully controlled environment, often listening to music and trying to take notes about his experience, although his notes are largely illegible because it was so hard to write while high.

Michaux found it challenging to describe his experience on the drug in words, either during or afterwards, although he tried: he eventually published five books based on his experiences. But drawing was his chief medium of expressing what he saw and felt while under the influence. Using a narrow range of media – just black and coloured chalks on paper – he drew the strange and surreal things his brain did while he was high.

1956, graphite, black and coloured inks on paper, by Henri Michaux (1899–1984)

He preferred to draw hours or days after the effects of the drug had worn off, so that he had full control over his body and mind to express himself. He said that he continued to feel a 'vibratory motion' in himself for some time after the immediate effects had ended. His drawings are dense, labyrinthine scribbles that form landscapes or seismographs of another world. The textures of his hallucinations seem to rise off the paper.

In his writings about mescaline, Michaux described some of the recurring motifs he would see. One was 'a furrow without beginning or end.' He described another experience like this: 'At times thousands of little tentacles of a gigantic starfish fastened to me so compactly that I could not tell if I was becoming the starfish or if the starfish had become me.' He sometimes saw faces, although he didn't usually draw them: 'Instead of a carpet of faces it might also have been a landscape or a mountain of faces.'

Michaux was not the first artist to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs. Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885–1939) both experimented with them, and the surrealists were infamous for their dabbling in narcotics, especially opium, as they sought ways to transcend reality.

The author Aldous Huxley also famously experimented with mescaline, which he wrote about in his 1954 book The Doors of Perception. Many other artists have used drugs in a less scientific way, dealing with addictions and substance abuse challenges that nonetheless greatly influenced their work, from Jean Cocteau to Andy Warhol. Michaux had stopped taking mescaline by the 1960s, but his experiences with it influenced his art for the rest of his career.

1966, black and coloured inks, and graphite, on paper, by Henri Michaux (1899–1984)

Michaux's mescaline drawings are currently the subject of an exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery in London, bringing together works in private collections as well as public ones in collaboration with the Archives Henri Michaux, Paris.

Michaux is probably best known for his mescaline drawings, but he also wrote extensive poetry and travelogues, as well as art criticism. He travelled a great deal in Asia and South America, and the cultures he encountered on his travels influenced his art. In 1963, he co-directed a film that was also inspired by his experiences with mescaline, Images of the Visionary World. He was a fundamentally interdisciplinary creative.

Michaux called the experience of taking mescaline 'seismic,' which is also a good description for this exceptional body of drawings. The strangely otherworldly zigzagged topography of his mind under the influence is a unique window into the ways drugs impact the chemistry of our minds. By setting pen to paper to communicate his experiences, he left a vast record of the elasticity of perception.

Eliza Goodpasture, commissioning editor, drawings

This content was funded by the Bridget Riley Art Foundation

The exhibition 'Henri Michaux: The Mescaline Drawings' is on at The Courtauld Gallery, London until 4th June 2025