It may be easy to judge someone like Dash Snow. His pedigree, his art, his drug abuse, his lifestyle. But when the artist joined the 27 Club and departed for the big "hamster nest" in the sky, he left behind many Polaroids, many tags, many works of art, and many grieving friends. Gavin McInnes, who you know from Vice, wrote a tribute to his friend and his relation to New York City.
The best part of living in New York is the feeling that you’re in the center of everything. This feeling is like heroin and soon you want more. Eventually, Brooklyn isn’t enough. Then, certain parts of Manhattan aren’t enough. You feel like you’re visiting your parents when you’re in Soho or you’re on a road trip when you’re in Chelsea. St. Marks is a mini mall and even the East Village feels like a pale imitation of the Lower East Side. You never felt like that when you were partying with Dash Snow. You felt like you were in the center of New York. He was the kind of thing people move to New York for.
Snow's friend Carol Lee at Paper Magazine described him as a "young and talented artist, downtown fixture, bad boy, SACER, member of IRAK, etc.—but more than anything, he was a friend." Meanwhile, the NY Post wrongfully uses him as a posthumous posterboy for their rag, and the NY Times labels him an "East Village Artistic Rebel" in their obituary, pinpointing his art as being driven by "Sexuality, violence and life’s fragility... also an air of exuberant misbehavior." With all the sudden attention and fawning, Gawker believes this is the beginning of a "Basquiat-esque art world canonization" of the artist.
P.S. Image #5 is very NSFW!
