Dash Snow
Dashiell A. Snow (July 27, 1981 – July 13, 2009) was an American artist based in New York City. Snow's photographs included scenes of sex, drugs, violence, and art-world pretense; his work often depicted the decadent lifestyle of young New York City artists and their social circle. His subjects included Dan Colen, Ryan McGinley, Terence Koh, and Agathe Snow. Early life and education. Dashiell A. Snow was born July 27, 1981 to Taya Thurman and Christopher Snow. He grew up on the Upper West Side in New York City. Snow and his siblings, Maxwell and Caroline, are  descendants of the de Menil family, who are known for their philanthropy and collection of American art. At thirteen, he was admitted to Hidden Lake Academy, a residential treatment center specializing in the treatment of children with oppositional defiant disorder. Career. As a teenager, Snow began taking photographs to document the places he might not remember the next day. In the 1990s, he was a member of the IRAK graffiti crew; the name of the group was meant to reference the Iraqi war that took place early in that decade. In order to sign his work, Snow used the tag  SACE” or “SACER. His first solo photography exhibition took place in 2005. In 2006, "The Wall Street Journal" profiled Snow and nine other emerging American artists, including Rosson Crow, Ryan Trecartin, Zane Lewis, Barney Kulok, Jordan Wolfson, and Keegan McHargue. The same year he was included in the Whitney Biennial. In 2007, Snow and Dan Colen co-created an installation of shredded phone books in Jeffrey Deitch's SoHo gallery; the exhibit was named “Nest” or “Hamster Nest”. In his later collage-based work, Snow used his semen as a material applied to or splashed across newspaper photographs of police  officers and/or other authority figures. Family and personal life. Snow's parents were Christopher Snow and Taya Thurman. His maternal grandparents were Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman and artist Marie-Christophe de Menil. He was the great-grandson of John de Menil and Dominique de Menil, the founders of the Menil Collection and Museum located in Houston, Texas. At the age of 18, Snow married Corsican artist Agathe Aparru Snow; the couple later divorced. In July 2007, his partner, Jade Berreau, gave birth to the couple's daughter, Secret Midnight Magic Nico. Death and legacy. On July 13, 2009, Snow died  of a drug overdose while a guest of Lafayette House in New York City. In 2016, his family sued McDonald's after they refused to remove the tag "SACE" from the graffiti-themed interior design used in some European and Asian restaurants; the case was later dismissed. A documentary film about the life of Dashiell Snow, "Moments Like This Never Last", was released in 2020. Collections. Snow's work is held in the following public collections: