What exactly is the legacy of Dash Snow?

New York’s self-declared bad-ass artist Dash Snow has died of a heroin overdose in his Manhattan hotel room yesterday. Dash Snow, similar to the late Michael Jackson, was known for his eccentric character, morphing his own lifestyle into an artwork itself. More so Dash Snow, as he did not really leave behind an acclaimed body of work for the afterworld to dwell on his genius. Inside the scene he will probably be remembered for people saying „I knew Dash Snow“ or „A friend of mine used to hang out with him“ more than his polaroids or recent collages decorated with his own semen. Altough Snow was not long ago quoted saying to a New York journalist that he had his walls lined with alphabetizd binders cataloging his work. „Because you never know what’s going to happen with Dash“.
That seemed in retrospect almost a bit too much uncool planning for post-stardom than the „artistic cool“ and „don’t care what will happen tomorrow attitude“ he tried to represent. For a long time he did not call himself an artist. And what he was doing as documenting his nights and days out, fucked on drugs and booze, with a stolen polaroid when he was 13. He always claimed of having estranged himself from his (wealthy) family after having spent two years in juvenile detention when he was a teenager. Dash Snow somehow never came across as very credible about trying to make it on his own, definitely not as the struggling artist. His claims helped to create the necessary hype that critics in NY seem to feed off in order to judge the talent of a newcomer.
Not to forget to mention that his maternal grandmother is a well known art collector, his aunt apparently is actress Uma Thurman and his brother Max was dating Mary Kate Olsen.
He certainly knew which strings to pull to promote his work to a spoilt and equally eccentric New York artworld. Like his ex-wife, artist Agathe, who cleverly hung on to her husband’s surname, he quickly became their darling, because he seemed rude and did not care. Maybe Dash Snow, co-founder of the Irak graffiti group, was just another rebell coming from a wealthy background showing his own „stable“ the middle finger and having great fun in doing so. Not many of us will get a chance to to do so and rise the interest of collectors such as Charles Saatchi. So, why not? But did he really have to go as far as becoming a heroin junkie or does this naturally come as part of the deal? Gone seem the romantic days where one could just be a rebel without a cause. Well, there was Warhol muse Eddie Sedgewick, who successfully partied herself to death, but then she never wanted to become a famous something. Maybe Pete Doherty, son of a navy general or similar sorts, could give answer about the ultimate temptation and self-destruction. And about what he thinks Jim Morrisson must have really felt deep inside his battered poetic soul.
Dash Snow leaves behind a little daughter, Secret. But what legacy, apart from dying at the mythical age of 27, did Dash Snow leave behind? For sure, he proved without batting an eyelid that he seemed to have no respect of his own life or death. And if his secret intention after all was to shock the by now so immune artworld, he definitely succeeded with a genuine statement: his own exit from the limelight just like that.