3 min read
The Cigarette and the Painter: Visual Art and the Aesthetics of Smoke
Painters have smoked for centuries—the cigarette a companion in the studio, a prop in the self-portrait, a tool of contemplation. The cigarette in visual art is an aesthetic object and a marker of the artist's identity.
Picasso smoked. de Kooning smoked. The cigarette appears in countless self-portraits, a prop that signals artistic identity: the contemplative smoker, the bohemian, the tortured genius. **The painter's cigarette is an aesthetic object—a visual element in the composition of the artist's life and work. The romance of the smoking artist has killed many of its practitioners. It has also produced some of the most enduring images in modern art.**
