DASH SNOW AND "THE GHOUL FACTOR"

A cynical view, perhaps, but Dash Snow's premature death would seem to be yet another artwork, another aspect of his downtown romance. In death, he has been made beautiful--a promise, a sad fever dream, truncated ruthlessly. How typical, how clichéd. In an otherwise thoughtful assessment of his work, the Guardian's Francesca Gavin insipidly pines for a time when we could rely on artists to off themselves mid-ascent:

There aren't many icons around these days. It sometimes feels like there are no James Deans or Jimi Hendrixes or Sylvia Plaths left. Yet artist Dash Snow, who has died at the age of 27, perhaps deserves the title.

Car crashes, pills, ovens...yup, those were the days. What better way to create "icons"? There are certainly few things more seductive than a tragic death before wrinkles, particularly if it snuggles with our whole tortured-artist fetish. (Some surely wish that Michael Jackson had figured this out sooner.) But isn't this something we should be ashamed of ourselves for craving?

In Snow's case, thoughts turn, inevitably, to the art market. Evidently the phenomenon by which an artist's prices rise dramatically after death is called “the ghoul factor". So what is happening to Snow's? The judges are out, but Alexandra Peers at New York magazine yields some interesting information:

Before Andy Warhol's death in 1987, no Warhol had sold for more than $1m; five years later, nearly two dozen had (though Warhol died at the start of a huge art-market boom, Snow at the end of one);

Many collectors and museums won't consider an artist until he’s passed away;

When Keith Haring died in 1990, people flooded the (already tanking) art market with his work, pushing down prices;

Polaroids age badly.

So death may make Dash Snow iconic, but it may not make a photograph of his worth selling yet.

~ EMILY BOBROW

Picture credit: JasonRogersFooDogGiraffeBee (via Flickr)