History has indisputably shown that the enduring legacy of any great artist survives way past the politics, religious scandals and even criminal offenses of that person’s lifetime. Some of the most revered geniuses in their fields had terrible vices that led to some form of tragedy.

For most of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent’s life, he was afflicted with a severe heroin, alcohol and cocaine addiction. He was nonetheless deemed a hero of France, and conferred its highest honors twice.

In 2001, he was awarded the rank of Commander of the Legion d’Honneur by President Jacques Chirac. He then received the rank of Grand Officier de la Legion d’Honneur from President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007.

The long-established National Order of the Legion of Honor has existed since 1802, inaugurated by Napoleon Bonaparte. Other recipients of this award include fashion designers Azzedine Alaïa and Valentino Garavani; writers Edith Wharton, Victor Hugo, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gustave Flaubert and Jean Cocteau; artists Salvador Dali and Auguste Rodin; directors Martin Scorsese, Wong Kar Wai, Richard Attenborough and Akira Kurosawa; singers/musicians Paul McCartney, Luciano Pavarotti, Shirley Bassey, Bono, Josephine Baker, Miles Davis and Barbara Streisand; and actors Robert Redford, Gene Kelly, Marlene Dietrich and Sarah Bernhardt.

St. Laurent was also the first living fashion designer to be honored with a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The iconic Coco Chanel, meanwhile, was a functioning drug user for most of her life, and indulged in morphine and heroin constantly until she died.

Institutionalized

The jazz greats Chet Baker and Billie Holliday were drug addicts. Such was Holiday’s addiction to heroin and alcohol that she was jailed several times, institutionalized and eventually died from this abuse. There was even an attempt to arrest her as she lay dying for possession of these drugs. Despite all this, she was awarded posthumously and inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1973.

One would imagine that at least half the singers in the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” have had multitudes of substance abuse problems and run-ins with the law.

The likes of Elton John, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Mick Jagger and David Bowie, all knighted by the Queen of England, dabbled in assorted drugs at some point in their lives. Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, universally considered among the most pivotal musicians of all time, were hooked on various barbiturates and pain medication, which eventually contributed to their demise.

Jackson has been honored by two presidents of the United States—Ronald Reagan in 1984 and George Bush in 1990.

The playwright and novelist Jean Genet, who was jailed on several occasions for various criminal acts (including petty theft and male prostitution), needed friends to petition the president of France to set aside a life sentence for him in prison.

In fact, he often wrote about criminals and people in prison in his books. The Nobel Prize-winning author Jean Paul Sartre, addicted to alcohol and amphetamines, was once arrested for civil disobedience but pardoned by president Charles de Gaulle “because he was a genius.”

The writer William S. Burroughs is considered by some to be one of the most culturally influential writers of the 20th century. He was not only addicted to heroin, but many of his novels are permeated with drug-induced hallucinations.

He also accidentally shot his wife in the head and killed her during a drunken game in 1951. In 1983, however, he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and was then awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France in 1984. Literary hero Robert Louis Stevenson was addicted to cocaine, and Charles Dickens to opium.

Death warrant

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, one of the greatest painters of the 17th century and the father of “modern painting,” was jailed on several occasions and even had a death warrant issued for him by the Pope. He murdered a man in a brawl and actually fled the city of Rome, first to Malta then to Sicily. Some of his greatest masterpieces, found in churches all over Italy, have been marveled at for centuries by “good Catholics.”

Pablo Picasso, widely regarded as one of the greatest painters of the 20th century, experimented with psychotropic drugs like many other artists of his time. He became addicted to hashish, opium and morphine sometime around his Cubist period, but eventually managed to overcome this.

Finally in film and theater, the Academy Award-winning actors Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Judy Garland were both drug addicts and died of overdoses. Judy’s daughter Liza Minnelli, winner of various Tony awards, Oscars, Emmys and Grammys, has battled with alcohol and drugs for most of her adult life. Elizabeth Taylor struggled with alcohol and drug-dependency for years, while Marilyn Monroe had a penchant for barbiturates with her alcohol. Meanwhile Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed were all alcoholics.

Although no artist should ever be considered above the law, nor should any kind of drug abuse be condoned, creative minds can sometimes be difficult or tormented. Great artists rarely function by any set of rules. In fact, it is inherent in their nature to break them, which is often what sets them apart and propels their work toward the extraordinary.

Their moral values mattered little to the art or artistry they left behind. It is the body of work that remains and counts, long after they are gone and the judgments and scandals burdened upon them have been forgotten. It is essential that the work be recognized purely for its significance and contribution to the arts, whether in the form of technique, influence or exemplification.

If anything at all, perhaps an exception might be made for plagiarism, an offense that has a direct bearing on the integrity of their work. As is often the case, history, and nothing else, has proven to be the ultimate judge.