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Decline in Skill. Hartmann offers no final conclusions from his experiment. Significant similarities in the art produced under the drug and that done by schizophrenics may lend support to medical scientists who think that some biochemical imbalance is responsible for schizophrenia. He still thinks that LSD may be useful in tracing archetypal patterns that emerge when inhibitions are lowered. Yet he now believes that, for the creative artist, drugs are likely to produce more negative than positive results. The works produced under the experiment bear him out.
Nearly all of them demonstrate a decline in skill and difficulty in making a cohesive composition. Several artists experienced difficulty in holding pencil or brush. One became paralyzed; another traumatically relived his experiences as a World War II flyer. Under the drug, an artist may lose all desire to create anything at all. His capacity for self-criticism is seriously damaged, and the classic reaction on seeing his work in the cold light of day is that it seemed so much better when he was making it.
Austrian Painter Ernst Fuchs finds a middle ground. He thinks that his experiments with mescaline and other drugs have opened an "aperture" in his consciousness that now enables him to experience the same kinds of perception via pure meditation. But his fellow Austrian, Friedrich Hundertwasser, found his own experience with drugs as a youth in Paris frightening, and is adamant in rejecting them. "Look at Venice," he says. "This city appears like a vision contrived under drug influence. Yet had its builders been drug eaters, they would have never managed the energy to build it. They would have merely dreamed about the city, and would have remained idle on their mud flats."