There aren't many icons around these days. It sometimes feels like there are no James Deans or Jimi Hendrixes or Sylvia Plaths left. Yet artist Dash Snow, who has died at the age of 27, perhaps deserves the title. Snow died from a drug overdose at the Lafayette Hotel in Manhattan on Monday night. He was one of the most promising young artists on New York's Lower East Side art scene, the so-called Bowery School, and in many ways was their mythical figurehead. Short, tattooed, with long blond hair and a shaggy beard, Dash was more rock star than artist.
Dash Snow's work fed on his extreme living. He captured images of mayhem. His work was visceral, bodily, often disgusting. He had few boundaries. He and his friends – Dan Colen, Ryan McGinley, Terence Koh and Dash's ex-wife Agathe Snow – injected the New York art scene with an energy that hadn't been there for years.
Snow's background often raised eyebrows. He came from the De Menil family, one of America's richest and most prominent art collecting dynasties. Yet he rebelled against them, growing up on the streets of New York from the age of 15, after spending two years in juvenile detention. Dash started creating graffiti as a member of the notorious and inventive Irak crew. He stumbled into art after friends Colen and McGinley encouraged him, initially creating Polaroid images filled with sex and hard drugs. The Wall Street Journal and New York Magazine went on to sing his praises. He was featured in the Whitney Biennial. His work was snapped up by major collectors like Dakis Joannou and Anita Zabludowicz.
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