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Life without cigarettes is a little less worth living - Jean-Paul Sartre
The cigarette: once so cool, so bohemian, the must-have accessory, inspiration for artists and writers. Today, it's a deadly weapon. That wispy trail of smoke now denotes a social outcast.
Reformed smoker Rodney James, curator of the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery on Melbourne's south-east fringe, has long pondered the links between smoking and art - both in art works and the lives of artists. Think Magritte and the pipe, for instance.
'Over the years, I've just been throwing things into a box,' he says. 'But then I started noticing that contemporary artists were picking up on it again.'
An exhibition about something as universal as smoking had to be international, he says, so he started delving into the basements of major galleries.
