Dead arty bad-boy addicts (DABBAs) are dangerously addictive.
In the middle of July, in the East Village's pricey Hotel Lafayette, a young downtown decadent and "emerging" artist named Dash Snow died a day before his 28th birthday, apparently of an intentional overdose of heroin.
Snow's fall, following as it did so closely on the flashing heels of Michael Jackson's last dance, led me into a long rabbit warren of meditations -- of which the following is only one tunnel -- on dead arty bad-boy addicts (DABBAs) and the subcultures that love them.
Because he started out as a graffiti artist, just like Jean-Michel Basquiat, and because Snow managed to die at the exact same age as his predecessor (who went on to become a post-overdose goldmine) Snow's numerous Polaroids, collages and installations are now candidates for rapid price appreciation. That he was a grandson of art world goddess Christophe deMenil hasn't hurt his chances. Someone has already created a Web-side called, 200 sites to know about Dash Snow. Attempts to canonize him - and commodify him - are underway.
His "legend" is a modestly re-touched reproduction of the now-standard saga of the sacrificial art star: Rebellion, drug use, exuberance, taste of success, despair. He was, his friends assure us, personally loveable: charming, "sweet." Also delicious: lithe, fair, sad, mischievous, regressed. He was notoriously fond of sex, drugs and danger: petty theft, little orgies in "hamster nests" of shredded phonebooks staged in galleries and hotels with friends: Dirty dumb fun.
Snow ran wild, eventually hooking up with a pack of Downtown artists that included Dan Colen and Ryan McGinley. The latter, a photographer who describes young Snow as his muse, captured him as a young graffiti artist tagging the side of a building at dusk -- an image of a saturnine angel high and alone that is now an icon in Snow's hagiography.
In ending his life, Mr. Snow abandoned his lover and his two year old daughter. It's pretty unforgivable, but DABBA addicts will eventually let it go. We did as much for Kurt Cobain, whose two year old daughter turned out alright despite her daddy's shotgun suicide, and we seem to have done as much for drunk-driver Jackson Pollack who took out Edith Metzger, a young woman who hapened to be in his car when he crashed it on August 11, 1956. The great thing about legends, as distinct from actual people, is that you can erase the parts you don't like.
I confess that, against my better judgement, I set aside the intimate tragedy of young Snow's life, his sufferings and flaws and became entranced by his press and on his pin-up potential. I debated with myself whether he was really handsome--like jazz great Chet Baker,
or just irresistibly strung out looking --like heroin-survivor Keith Richards.
I became fascinated by his tattoos, his weird beards, his proclivity for ejaculating on tabloid images of Saddam Hussein and presenting the results as art
I imagined what his wallows in trash must have felt like; I got empathetically angry at his mother. (When he was a teen, she shipped him off to some rehab outfit whose blandness, judging by its website would have driven the Pope to pop pills.) I hated him, loved him, was him, congratulated myself on not being him. In other words, although I knew this instance of the DABBA romance might be cut with inferior product, I made the buy, took it home and mainlined it.
I had a similar imaginary-playmate response to Dash's death that millions of media-consumers had to Jacko's. Now that he was something other than a living person I could use "Dash Snow" to generate emotions and an illusion of connection to things I don't have the time or nerve or social placement to access. Through him I momentarily escaped the beloved confines of my life. It was dirty, dumb fun.
The scientific community, psychologists, neuroscientists, et. al. know a lot about addiction, and, while I find much of what they tell us fascinating, none of it is fun. Science makes the glamor of addiction wither on the vine: At first, researchers tell us, opiates like heroin flood the brain with pleasure-giving dopamine. Many potential addicts start out with fewer than normal dopamine receptors, which makes the early experience of dopamine highs feel less like a kick than a revelation. But over time drug-associated dopamine surges distort one's ability to set priorities (like caring for daughters) or unlearn a drug habit. In later stages of a habit, the addicted brain tries to stabilize itself by shedding dopamine receptors, and with them goes the ability to feel joy. That kind of impairment is slow to heal and is sometimes permanent, which is one reason addicts so often relapse, as did Dash Snow.
Science is fascinating; it has an endless narrative of discovery and rediscovery; it connects people all over the world; it's strong medicine. But as an antidote to the lure of intoxication scientific knowldge remains a placeholder - not a cure.
I still feel (guiltily) glad that Dash Snow did crazy, stupid vulgar things that I can enjoy from the safety of a museum's atrium. As an artist, he may turn out to be more of a Modigliani - gorgeous, dissolute, minor -- than a Corbet - arrogant, shocking, major - but, speaking as one addiction addict among billions, I'm delighted to have him for my collection.
