Contemplating Dash

I'm disturbed, intrigued, terrified, and enamored. Something about Dash Snow struck a chord within me the very first time I was introduced to his artistry. Which, although I look at art all day every day, does not happen often.

It was his Nest book with Dan Colen and it stung. I’m not even sure exactly why, but Dash Snow embodies everything I was fascinated and scared of - all at the same time. His name alone kinda explains it all: a Dash of insanity, a flash of the extreme. And his death has not settled well with me, even though I never even met the crazy guy.

I think the article Chasing Dash Snow by Ariel Levy, published at the start of 2007 sums up something true: “’As a case study, here’s a creature who’s just reacting. I think that for the last five years or so, there is a larger desire for the personal: something that has the hand of a person in it. It’s not I’m going to do this so people will think I’m crazy. I am crazy! I think he’s genuinely and completely self-destructive.’” Which is, of course, what the art world has always wanted, especially in New York City, what Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning supplied, along with genius. That magic flash of insanity, framed and for sale.”

"Still, hating them has more advantages than respecting them. Because if you were to get caught up in the insanity and the creativity and the ridiculousness of their world, it could mean certain things. It could mean, for example, that it isn’t just that you were born at the wrong time. That maybe this city has still got it going on, antiseptic as it can seem. That the wild life is still out there for the taking, and the only difference between them and you is that they’re taking it and making something out of it."

He lived so fast and so ridiculously, yet I find myself utterly fascinated by this human. A human who, apparently, did not even have much respect for other human life- especially his own. And perhaps that is the heart of the matter: how can such a privileged kid from the crème de la crème of the NYC art scene give it all up? No, not even give it all up, but totally reject it and then turn around and become a famous artist himself. What was it? What did he see? How did he think? Did any of it make any sense in his head?

I’ll never know, but I do know that I have not been this affected by a stranger’s death in a long time. And for that, I have no explanation, I just know when I bristle. And this has kept me bristling since the news of Dash’s overdose yesterday afternoon.

More info here.