The Morphine Addict

This work is a stark reminder that substance abuse and addiction are not new problems. Today, we associate late nineteenth-century Paris with liquid intoxicants like absinthe and champagne, but harder drugs pervaded the city as well. Morphine and opium addiction were common, especially in the demimonde of sex workers. The "respectable" world of upper middle-class art collectors had a morbid, even aestheticized, fascination with the world of prostitutes and addicts. Grasset's graphic depiction of the combination of desperation and release as a young woman injects herself epitomizes that strange fascinaton. Grasset likely intended the image, with its lithe lines and flat planes of color, reminiscent of fashionable Japanese woodblock prints, to be horrifying and beautiful in equal measure.