Dash Snow Backlash

Allison Hoffman — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:08:32 +0000

On Monday, Dash Snow, a 27-year-old artist who was known as much for being the rebel hero of a certain type of debauched downtown New York hipster as for his manic, drug-influenced room-sized installations and found-image photography, was found dead of an apparent overdose in Manhattan’s East Village. Tuesday brought a wave of glowing testimonials from Snow’s newly bereft friends, who talked about his recent efforts to kick his drug habit, about seeing him recently with his toddler daughter, Secret, and, from his art dealer, about his work for impending shows.

Now it’s time for the inevitable backlash, and this morning, Jewish blogger Daniel Sieradski posted an item to Twitter noting that he was “having a hard time feeling sad for dash snow, whose definition of good art included defiling Jewish objects.” Sieradski included a link to an image of a half-torn poster depicting a naked man with a tallis draped over his erect—and apparently Wahlberg-proportioned—member. Except, oops! The poster was actually created by Snow’s artistic collaborator and former roommate Dan Colen, whose first art project amounted to ejaculating over pictures of hip-hop stars taken from magazines. Colen’s father, Sy, an avid fundraiser for Israeli groups, speculated to New York magazine in 2007 that his son, whose family lost dozens of relatives in the Holocaust, was probably just trying to suggest his belief in Jewish procreation. “The penis for him, it’s something sacred,” Colen père told reporter Ariel Levy. “It is the staff of life.”

Tablet Magazine » Sy Colen

Dash Snow Backlash