Art Bum Extraordinaire

January 10, 2007 7:21 AM

Downtown Lives OnAre the New Yorkers who lament the passing of cool, outre downtown (victim of high rents and a safer city) just not looking hard enough? Or are Ryan McGinley, Dan Colen, and Dash Snow just punks making bad art? Threat or menace?
posted by dame (84 comments total)

a downtown neverland where people are thrilled and naked, leaping in front of graffiti on the street, sacked out in heaps of flannel shirts—everything very debauched and drug-addled and decadent,

where's all this happening? all I see downtown is bars, boutiques and overpriced restaurants.
posted by jonmc at 7:29 AM on January 10, 2007

I pointed out that hamsters don’t do drugs.

“Hamsters,” said Snow, “are animals.”
posted by Hands of Manos at 7:37 AM on January 10, 2007

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.

Apocrypha.
posted by The Straightener at 7:39 AM on January 10, 2007

Aw, dame - have you visited St. Mark's lately? Downtown's croaked! Period! Don't bother with the fork, just seal up the cardboard box with some duct tape.

*pauses to throw shoes at urchins on the front lawn*

Lousy kids! The BrooklynRail also profiled Mr. "I was in Beautiful Losers", for anyone interested in his work. As something of a fogey, myself, I'm more of a Futura 2000 fan.

*drops victrola needle on punk rawk lp*

Thanks for the link, though. It's good to have dispatches from th' Apple.
posted by Smart Dalek at 7:41 AM on January 10, 2007

"Are the New Yorkers who lament the passing of cool, outre downtown (victim of high rents and a safer city) just not looking hard enough? Or are Ryan McGinley, Dan Colen, and Dash Snow just punks making bad art?"

Yeah, the second one.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:41 AM on January 10, 2007

His mother made headlines a few years ago for charging what was then the highest rent ever asked on a house in the Hamptons: $750,000 a season.
Trustafarian.
posted by exogenous at 7:49 AM on January 10, 2007

Snow’s maternal grandmother is a De Menil, which is to say art-world royalty, the closest thing to the Medicis in the United States. His mother made headlines a few years ago for charging what was then the highest rent ever asked on a house in the Hamptons: $750,000 a season. And his brother, Maxwell Snow, is a budding member of New York society who has dated Mary-Kate Olsen. But Snow has concocted something else for himself. He has been living as hard as a person can—in and out of jail, doing drugs, running from the police—for a decade. He’s unschooled, self-taught.

...

Snow was sent to juvenile detention when he was 13, and since then he has lived on his own and shunned his wealthy family.

Nine pages of this? Are you serious?
posted by prostyle at 7:52 AM on January 10, 2007

Trustafarian.

If you read the article, it claims he doesn't take money from his family. (I don't know what I think of the whole thing, honestly, but as a point of information.)
posted by dame at 7:53 AM on January 10, 2007

You can always find a few cool people doing interesting work pretty much anywhere you go these days. It's the culture of passion and the cloud of struggling genius that we miss, and a guy who gets half a mil for a sculpture ain't exactly edgy anymore anyhow.
posted by DenOfSizer at 7:57 AM on January 10, 2007

Rich kid does drugs and makes bad art: News at 11.

Anyway... The old, creative New York didn't disappear. It just moved to Brooklyn and points east. So the artists are now doing their thing in Red Hook or Bushwick instead of the Loeasaida. Acknowledge it, embrace it and move on.
posted by huskerdont at 7:58 AM on January 10, 2007

It's the culture of passion and the cloud of struggling genius that we miss,

And the sex. Don't forget the sex.
posted by spicynuts at 8:00 AM on January 10, 2007

NYC absorbs more energy than it emits.
posted by Burhanistan at 8:00 AM on January 10, 2007 [3 favorites]

Disclaimer: I like some of Ryan McGinley's photography, and would probably enjoy some of the art of his friends. On the other hand...

I can't help but think that the fact that someone like Dash Snow will never be an outsider to art. I know people who look strung out, have bad hygiene, and party all the time. Some of them might even have some artistic ambitions. None of them, however, are having their art being sold by expensive dealers. Maybe they missed the Vice gravy train, or they're unfortunate to not be the heir of an art family.

Dash Snow isn't working against type by being an artist, or by living a sleazy lifestyle. He's supposedly working against type by being "naive" to art and creating it despite his "rejection" of his family. There's a willful rejection of self-consciousness involved, or is there? At some level, I think these guys know exactly what they're doing and how to remain marketable.
posted by mikeh at 8:03 AM on January 10, 2007

NYCERS GO HOME

huggles, dame
posted by cortex at 8:04 AM on January 10, 2007

We are home, dude.
posted by jonmc at 8:11 AM on January 10, 2007

mikeh: They only know the right people from having been rich in the first place. They really don't know what they're doing... art is very subjective, and is usually crap. (more outrageous when crap sells for six figures or more)

I think this week's cover of New York was one of the grossest things I've ever seen. I can handle three men in a bed together, but not if they're scruffy and dirty-looking. *gag*
posted by brianvan at 8:11 AM on January 10, 2007

dame: "If you read the article, it claims he doesn't take money from his family. (I don't know what I think of the whole thing, honestly, but as a point of information.)"

"Rent a flat above a shop,
cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
pretend you never went to school.
But still you'll never get it right,
cos when you're laid in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all..."
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:15 AM on January 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

Downtown's passe. Real art has moved to the outer boroughs, see?(31st & Ditmars)
posted by jonmc at 8:17 AM on January 10, 2007

What's more boring than self-indulgent artists?
Supercilious bloggers bitching about them.
Give it a rest, you 4th graders.
posted by hellbient at 8:17 AM on January 10, 2007

That is still not the same thing as a trustafarian. I think he is the lamest of them all, frankly, (McGinley takes some nice pictures), but don't abuse English just cause you hate him.
posted by dame at 8:17 AM on January 10, 2007

PeterMcDermott, I actually love you. That is exactly the comment I was just about to make.
posted by matthewr at 8:19 AM on January 10, 2007

Those three do absolutely nothing for me, and this coming from someone who follows and enjoys modern art a great deal (in particular the Brits, the Poles and ze Germans, but that's for another thread. Go, Leipzig!) They have the advantage of having fantastic access to the media through their social connections, and that's about all they have going for them. And the coke! Don't forget the coke.

NYC absorbs more energy than it emits.

Bravo.
posted by Brown Jenkin at 8:20 AM on January 10, 2007

I think these guys know exactly what they're doing and how to remain marketable.

Definitely. And whether or not he takes money from mom and dad, nobody can tell me this guy didn't have an ENORMOUS leg up in the NY art world.

But I admit, I had to bail after about 4 and 1/2 pages of that article. It was starting to bug me.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:22 AM on January 10, 2007

And the coke! Don't forget the coke.

No coke. Pepsi.

Give it a rest, you 4th graders.

Oh, come on. There's so few people I can honestly feel superior to, even though they're doing more than me, getting more fame than me and making more money than. I'm still morally superior to these wastrel posers. Don't make me give that up.
posted by jonmc at 8:22 AM on January 10, 2007

Part of what made McGinley so famous (like Goldin before him) was that he offered not just an artist’s vision of a free and rebellious alternative life but also the promise that he was actually living it, through photos that looked spontaneous, stolen, of an intimate cast of characters, a family of friends, and in McGinley’s case, of Snow in particular.

Jesus Christ, when oh when will the notion of 'Artist as Hero' die? The whole premise of 'the artists lifestyle' has done more to make shitty art and distract from the art in favor of the artist.
posted by Snyder at 8:23 AM on January 10, 2007

I don't care one way or the other, Dame. I just wanted to dance along with Jarvis Cocker.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:23 AM on January 10, 2007

Good call, PeterMcDermott, but I'd also add:

"Now you've chosen poverty
You did it for the sake of being hip
Begging for a dollar
Never doubting for a moment
Your bohemian indignence
And you wonder why the folks
In your run down neighborhood
Don't recognize you as a kindred soul
'Cause they know you gotta a bed
In a sunny sub-division
Anytime you wanna run home."
posted by Snyder at 8:27 AM on January 10, 2007

No coke. Pepsi.

Nice.

Did you watch that Belushi special last night too?
posted by Brown Jenkin at 8:28 AM on January 10, 2007

I've met Jarvis Cocker, my friend. I was a Britpop geek when I was fifteen and no one else here had heard of Pulp. I have a Menswear (Menswear!) on my iPod. I need not your silly link!

I thought the cover was the hottest part, brianvan. Now, enough posting to my own post. Resisting . . . compulsion . . .
posted by dame at 8:33 AM on January 10, 2007

"He has been living as hard as a person can—in and out of jail, doing drugs, running from the police—for a decade. He’s unschooled, self-taught."

Meh. He's no G.G. Allin.
posted by MikeMc at 8:35 AM on January 10, 2007

You may not be able to find him, but you can hear his name, that zooming syllable�Dash!�punctuating conversations in Chelsea galleries and Lower East Side coke parties and Miami art fairs and the offices of underground newspapers in Copenhagen and Berlin, like a kind of supercool international Morse code.

Oh, fer crissakes. *rolls eyes heavenward*
posted by jokeefe at 8:35 AM on January 10, 2007

I have a Menswear (Menswear!) on my iPod.

I'm now picturing an iPod wearing a little suit and tie.

"He has been living as hard as a person can—in and out of jail, doing drugs, running from the police—for a decade. He’s unschooled, self-taught."

He's a loner, dottie. A rebel.
posted by jonmc at 8:37 AM on January 10, 2007

Hasn't there always been a symbiotic relationship between rich, slumming patrons and 'downtown' artists? One could not exist without the other. I mean, who was buying Picasso and Matisse? Certainly not the butcher, the baker or the candlestick maker. The way to fame is through those who have the connections to the money, whether you're born with those connections or not. So I don't see any reason to disparage any of these people for doing what's been done for ages.
posted by spicynuts at 8:38 AM on January 10, 2007

I mean, who was buying Picasso and Matisse? Certainly not the butcher, the baker or the candlestick maker.

Well, the butcher would prefer Francis Bacon, I'd imagine.
posted by jonmc at 8:40 AM on January 10, 2007

Fucking downtown used to be pretty fun, because it was exactly the same thing as these dudes were doing but everybody was performing for themselves rather than the readers of NY Mag. Of course the hope was always that NY Mag would show up, but hope for fame is always a better story than fame itself. If you are into this kind of art which is all about calculation, you really get the "artifice" part. It's like a soap opera for people who are too cool to admit they like soap operas.

I swear I knew this Dash kid but he's too young, so I knew a kid named Dash who was almost exactly like this kid but about six or seven years older.

I wish that hack author had checked around a little bit before they put that article to bed: "He does graft." and "Derel" indeed. Graf and dero. Graft, ass.
posted by Divine_Wino at 8:41 AM on January 10, 2007

Art is deception.
posted by xod at 8:45 AM on January 10, 2007

I've met Jarvis Cocker, my friend. I was a Britpop geek when I was fifteen and no one else here had heard of Pulp. I have a Menswear (Menswear!) on my iPod. I need not your silly link!

It wasn't aimed at you in particular, Dame. I just don't think there's enough opportunities in general to see Jarvis doing the swimming dance from the original Common People video.

If you give me any excuse at all, I'm gonna post it.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:50 AM on January 10, 2007

I'm not a huge Pulp fan (I liked that 'Starship Troopers' woo-hoo song), but I'll always have a soft-spot for pulp since their guitarist is the only other person I've ever heard besides myself exhort the greatness of Bob Landers with Willie Joe & his Unitarians' 'Cherokee Dance.'
posted by jonmc at 8:57 AM on January 10, 2007

More of the author's Ariel Levy sssssensational writing. Well, the headlines scream.

Poor NYC. Always will be remembered for the twin towers....and the other day the near mass hysteria...'what's that gas smell' downtown...

How ya gonna attract the tourists, now that they've left¿ Ah, art, get 'em back into town.

What was that other young promising artist... Basquiat, instant money, success, coke, more coke.... dead now.

Snow does snow. Now there's a headline./

The hamster thing is pretty fucked up and funny though. What about the spinning wheel though. No running wheel for these hamsters¿

I thought it was funny to read and all, but yeah, 9 pages¿ Nah, I only got through a few.
posted by alicesshoe at 8:57 AM on January 10, 2007

I mean, who was buying Picasso and Matisse?

Gertrude Stein. And don't assume that the swells in New York took to Picasso immediately when he was Ryan McGinley's age.
posted by Brown Jenkin at 9:00 AM on January 10, 2007

Nine pages of this? Are you serious?

I'm sure they are.


New York is the "hipper-than-thou" magazine of record.

Think The NY Times "Sunday Styles" section-- only expanded and even more annoying.
posted by wfc123 at 9:06 AM on January 10, 2007

I mean, who was buying Picasso and Matisse?

"The De Menils ended up in Houston, where they started collecting important works by Léger, Matisse, Cézanne, Braque, Picasso, which they kept in the vast home they had designed by Philip Johnson.

[...]

I point out that if you are writing a story about an artist, you really have to mention that he comes from the single greatest art family in America. “You don’t have to! You want to!” she shrieks. All De Menil will admit about Snow is that 'it’s true that we love art and we look at it together and we advise each other.' "
posted by xod at 9:10 AM on January 10, 2007

that zooming syllable Dash! punctuating conversations in Chelsea galleries and Lower East Side coke parties and Miami art fairs and the offices of underground newspapers in Copenhagen and Berlin

Oh, absolutely, he's just everywhere. But you know he got his first big break at art.com.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:14 AM on January 10, 2007

And don't assume that the swells in New York took to Picasso immediately when he was Ryan McGinley's age.


I don't recall specifying New York.
posted by spicynuts at 9:14 AM on January 10, 2007

jonmc: "I'm not a huge Pulp fan (I liked that 'Starship Troopers' woo-hoo song), but I'll always have a soft-spot for pulp since their guitarist is the only other person I've ever heard besides myself exhort the greatness of Bob Landers with Willie Joe & his Unitarians' 'Cherokee Dance.'"

I'm not a fan either, but I love that video. Not even sure I can recall any of their other songs.

BTW, despite the fact that your tastes are very different to mine, I'm enjoying your Voxblog
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:18 AM on January 10, 2007

But Dash’s grandmother is the best...” said McGinley.

“I see her here and there,” Snow interrupted.

“She’s always taking care of us...”

“Getting us drunk,” said Snow. Snow said he has no contact with his parents. “Cut off. Scumbags.”

But as it happens, this isn’t quite true. There was a giant photograph on the wall of a man snorting cocaine, and it’s Chris Snow, Dash’s father; I recognized him from one of McGinley’s binders.

“Well, yeah, I like him, we just don’t talk that much,” Snow said when I asked about it.

“You do talk to your dad!” McGinley shouted. “We’ve all hung out with your dad!”

Snow thought for a minute, then revised. “Recently, my dad and I got back in touch,” he said. “He’s awesome." . . . But he really doesn’t speak to his mother, Snow said. Ever.

I have to assume, from the fawning tone of the piece, that the reality of this guy's prevarications about his distance from his most-powerful-art-collecting-clan-on-the-planet family are even more transparent than this implies. Meaning he's a famous artist because he lives in Manhattan, and knows everyone in the scene, and they all know him because he's a De Menil and it probably intimidates all the other artists and scenesters who aren't blue-blooded because the guy's family could make or break them. And then he lives weirdly enough to pass for edge among the scions of Upper East Side duplexes. Ergo: hot new artist.

None of which would matter, particularly, if his art was great. But jizzing on New York Post collages? Isn't that like a dorm-room stoner's idea of a biting metaphor?

And the hamster thing? Honest to god, one of my closest friends suggested this as the design motif for his second-year student house. Newspapers everywhere, a running wheel, sugar-water out of a big water cooler with a teat on it. He didn't have the money and connections to actually do it in a London luxury hotel, though . . .
posted by gompa at 9:19 AM on January 10, 2007

This article is like 90 pages long.

That having been said, Dash's Rivington Arms show was actually pretty good.
posted by nathancaswell at 9:19 AM on January 10, 2007

PeterMcDermott: thank you. I've been working really hard on it. The list is completed and cast in stone, so all I can tell you is there's a lot of good stuff to come.
posted by jonmc at 9:27 AM on January 10, 2007

I'm not a huge Pulp fan (I liked that 'Starship Troopers' woo-hoo song)

I believe the band you're referring to is Blur. It's an understandable mistake.
posted by SBMike at 10:10 AM on January 10, 2007

*smacks head*

thanks.
posted by jonmc at 10:11 AM on January 10, 2007

The emperor wears no clothes. I'm more than familiar with this whole "scene" and most of it is nothing but nepotism.
posted by Liquidwolf at 10:32 AM on January 10, 2007

Meh. The NY art world creates & destroys a couple of these enfants terribles every generation or so. Either they die, which is bonus for everyone involved, since they don't have to watch them grow up and the value of what little actual work they've left behind rises, or they grow up and become respectable and noone remembers how famous and outre they used to be. It is kind of interesting, though, that this guy came from the de Menils - the movers and shakers don't usually eat their own young; they prefer someone elses.
posted by mygothlaundry at 10:32 AM on January 10, 2007

I don't recall specifying New York.

When was New York ever mentioned? I must have pulled it out of thin air.
posted by Brown Jenkin at 10:39 AM on January 10, 2007

Peter McDermott, I hope we may work together then. I'll give you the in, then you can post away.
posted by dame at 10:39 AM on January 10, 2007

When I saw this in the magazine the other day (COVER story, WTF??), I couldn't roll my eyes hard enough. It's the kind of article that implies lets you know right away that you might have to jog, coolness-wise, to keep up with what these guys are doing.

To anyone who lives here and sees what the "young-at-art" in NYC are doing, these guys don't stand out in the least as doing anything even remotely groundbreaking or original. If it wasn't for that aforementioned leg-up in the art world, they wouldn't even be a blip.

I generally like people like this, who live extreme lifestyles because they can and wanna, and it's fun when they contribute artistically, but when they are given this kind of media fellatio it makes me want to rend my garments.
posted by hermitosis at 10:42 AM on January 10, 2007

And when your family is that rich or famous, you don't have to accept money from them in order for all kinds of doors to be opened to you. People give you stuff and do stuff for you in order for them to work their own way up the food chain. Or because they fear retribution from the top of that chain in some form or another.
posted by hermitosis at 10:47 AM on January 10, 2007

uninteresting and juvenile.
posted by footnote at 10:56 AM on January 10, 2007

“The thing is, it’s fun to be an outlaw and everything, but if I were a cop? And I had to chase some kid across the 101? I’d fucking beat the shit out of him, too.”

Best part of the article, btw.
posted by Brown Jenkin at 10:58 AM on January 10, 2007

I don't think white men should be allowed to create "art" any more even if their parents are silly rich
posted by fuq at 11:29 AM on January 10, 2007

After thinking about this article some more, I think it is really sweet how New York and Levy want it to be real.
posted by dame at 11:34 AM on January 10, 2007

New York magazine is the worst piece of shit dreck I've ever stumbled upon. My old roomate used to get it, and my brother and I would sit around the kitchen table just gawking at how utterly masturbatory it was. Take it from me- if New York magazine likes something, ANYTHING, it is most likely total crap. I've started weaning myself off air because the editors at New York enjoy breathing.
Having lived in decidedly crappier areas of New York, I feel like New York magazine is symptomatic of an entire mindset that holds that nothing of any interest happens outside of New York, with New York defined as the Village, the restaurants of the Upper East Side and maybe Williamsburg.
posted by 235w103 at 11:47 AM on January 10, 2007 [3 favorites]

When was New York ever mentioned? I must have pulled it out of thin air.

Don't be a douche, Brown. I made a generalized, non-NYC specific comment about artists and the rich to which you replied something about Picasso not being immediately embraced in NY.
posted by spicynuts at 11:53 AM on January 10, 2007

If you stop looking at Dash Snow, he'll just go away.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:02 PM on January 10, 2007

The first generation creates wealth, the second generation manages wealth, the third generation studies art history and the last degenerates.
posted by elwoodwiles at 12:10 PM on January 10, 2007

Before you judge, why don't you take a look at their actual work (NSFW!):

Dash Snow (one of my favorite photo series)

Ryan McGinley

Dan Colen

*Note: sometimes just the image will appear, without the black background or the arrow to the next image. Hit reload and proper page will load.
posted by pcameron at 12:10 PM on January 10, 2007

I agree that I didn't like the article, or find it relevant. But hold that against the magazine, not the artists. As easy (dare I say lazy) as it is to cariacture young artists as lazy and "lucky", these three have made alot of really interesting work.
posted by pcameron at 12:25 PM on January 10, 2007

Well, I guess there's no accounting for taste.

But it's banal and self-congratualtory.
posted by Snyder at 12:27 PM on January 10, 2007

it=the photos
posted by Snyder at 12:27 PM on January 10, 2007

Don't be a douche, Brown. I made a generalized, non-NYC specific comment about artists and the rich to which you replied something about Picasso not being immediately embraced in NY.

If I was indeed a douche, I'd probably identify with the three stooges profiled in the article.

Before you judge, why don't you take a look at their actual work

I've seen it. They have fuck-all to say aside from "I'm on crack", "my friends are on crack", and "check out the squalor".
posted by Brown Jenkin at 12:33 PM on January 10, 2007

It's funny--this is like the 3rd or 4th or 5th try (or more, in the past 5-10 years) at creating a "school" out of various artists here, and they all fall flat. There's really no there there, on the whole (especially when you compare it to abroad). So much new art is so random, even if wonderful taken individually--it's like some retro (modernist? critic-focused?) goal to dub a bunch into a "school" or "warhol's children" or whatever.
posted by amberglow at 12:39 PM on January 10, 2007

pcameron you're right - he's taken some amazing pictures. They're all good for one reason or another, but a handful of those polaroids are outstanding. Thanks for the extra perspective.
posted by Flashman at 12:47 PM on January 10, 2007

I can't help but think that this is nothing but an elaborate hustle. I mean, I know the NY Magazine writer got hustled, but even the actual photographs make me feel like someone's trying to sell me a busted Polex for 20 bucks.
posted by The Straightener at 1:13 PM on January 10, 2007

Metafilter: I'm on crack, my friends are on crack, and check out the squalor
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:22 PM on January 10, 2007

Thanks pcameron for showing some of the photo's. Some are inspired. Puhlease, how many coke snorting off of flacid penii do we need to see¿ Looked staged and it's no Jeff ]Wall is it[.

Yeah, yeah, those weren't good old days looking back they may say if they live long enough. They can say they lived through it, but what good if you can't remember¿

Squalor indeed. ugh. Nice memories.
posted by alicesshoe at 1:24 PM on January 10, 2007

The photos are exactly what you would expect a drug addicted person given license and living in that area would take pictures of. Is it art if I take a picture of stained toilet paper and then put it in a gallery?
posted by Burhanistan at 1:24 PM on January 10, 2007

Brown Jenkin: I've seen it. They have fuck-all to say aside from "I'm on crack", "my friends are on crack", and ..."

Your mama's on crack?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 1:25 PM on January 10, 2007

And my daddy don't rock and roll.
posted by Brown Jenkin at 1:27 PM on January 10, 2007

pcameron: these three have made alot of really interesting work

Can you link to some then? 'cause what you linked to was self-indulgent, unsophisticated, uninspired, and boring.
posted by nicwolff at 1:28 PM on January 10, 2007

you forgot derivative, nic ; >
posted by amberglow at 1:32 PM on January 10, 2007

When historians look back on New York magazine I think the whole Global War on Terror thing will start making a lot of sense. I mean, if you had to choose between reading New York and blowing up innocent Iraqi civilians well the argument could be made that killing the Iraqis has a point.
posted by nixerman at 3:19 PM on January 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

I like that the one dude has a tattoo of Saddam Hussein on his arm.
posted by cell divide at 3:34 PM on January 10, 2007

I can't believe how far Anil Dash has fallen since he stopped hanging around these parts.
posted by Kwine at 5:45 PM on January 10, 2007

nice
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:14 PM on January 10, 2007

"Live like a bourgeois that you may write like a demon." -Flaubert
posted by jason's_planet at 7:08 PM on January 11, 2007