Messy life, clichéed death for prince of hipsters

Demise of Dash Snow, notorious in New York's downtown art scene, marks the end of an era.

Dash Snow died this past Monday of a heroin overdose, and obituaries all over the world have established him, already, as "iconic," a kind of cipher for the Downtown New York art scene of the past 10 years. They usually begin by identifying him as an artist but nobody really wants to talk about his art. He was a fascinating muse for other artists, but his lifestyle is the most interesting thing about him, involving as it did a devotion to every kind of hedonism possible when a person has no respect for taboos and pots and pots of money. The style of his death also represents the end of a particular moment in the life of American art, the logical conclusion of its utter submission to the glut of money fuelled by fraudulent financial instruments pumping through the world's major cities before the crash. He was an icon of a nasty and empty art so cynical it amounted nearly to nihilism.

Snow was also, in a very direct way, one of the most influential forces on popular culture. Gavin McInnes, the founder of the hipster bible Vice magazine, literally used to follow Snow around recording the smallest detail of his life. The fact is you've seen Dash Snow. You can see him on Ossington tonight if you want. He's the trucker-hat-donning, skinny-jeans-wearing, Pabst-Blue-Ribbon-drinking, Converse-shoe-stepping trustafarian hipster of the past decade who thinks that the good life is staying up until eight in the morning snorting blow in the toilet stalls at after-hours clubs. Snow was the source that Vice magazine used to develop that template.

The comparison with Basquiat, another New York artist who died from consuming massive quantities of drugs, has already begun and it is not flattering to Snow. I caught the Basquiat retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2005, and it was a revelation of his searing originality and consistent growth right up to the point of his death. Basquiat's life was about the work. Even his drug use was about the work. He would snort coke all night to paint and then shoot up in the morning to fall asleep. He poured his demiurge energies into self-education and the mastery of technique, steeping himself in the traditions of Symbolism and Expressionism, which he then melded with street art.

Snow's work is the stuff teenage kids do at parties. His most famous pieces are a photograph of himself snorting coke off a semi-erect penis, and a collection of newspaper pages covered with his sperm. Basquiat's hedonism fuelled his creativity, but for Snow hedonism was the creativity. Ariel Levy's profile of Snow in New York magazine in 2007, which made him famous beyond his immediate circle of friends, began with a description of a game he played semi-regularly with the sculptor Dan Colen called "The Hamster's Nest." "To make a Hamster's Nest, Snow and Colen shred up 30 to 50 phone books, yank around all the blankets and drapes, turn on the taps, take off their clothes, and do drugs – mushrooms, coke, ecstasy – until they feel like hamsters." This is what Snow was good at. His art grew out of running around at night, doing graffiti and stealing. He was proud of being a thief; he believed it gave him authenticity. He paid bums to let him tag their backs. He thought it was cool.

Even the hedonism seems joyless and cynical, fuelled by only the shallowest spirit of rebellion. Because, of course, Dash Snow was rich. He was a de Menil, a member of a family regularly featured on Forbes' list of the richest families in America and one of the greatest art collecting dynasties in history. How else could he have maintained his lifestyle if he were not a scion of one of America's great fortunes? How could he have called himself an artist if he were not a descendant of some of the greatest patrons the world has ever known? His brother has dated Mary-Kate Olsen. His grandmother commissioned the Rothko chapel in Houston. His family sponsore