There is No Point

In a new spate of responsive articles-articles without journalistic merit subjective as they are, and meandering, I find myself writing about Dash Snow, an artist I knew little or nothing about. What one did tend to know concerned his legend as depicted in the Wikipedia article (quoted at the end of this...essay or click on link). I include one image that I responded to found on Google.

Dash Snow died at 27. I don't, or didn't, know Dash Snow from Adam. I'd seen his photo, along with a group of other twenty something artists he worked with, on the cover of New York magazine, or was it Time Out, a while back, and felt vaguely queasy at the time, as calculated shock appeared to be their modus operandi, i.e. method-grab the public by their balls and don't let go. Remember this is all post Aubrey Beardsley, Rimbaud, Chapman brothers, Hermann Nietzsche. What creeps in though is always a sense that someone has to do it, go full tilt at decadence, be a sort of societal safety valve. Then again he probably really didn't care, or saw no point, or meaning, or saw the work as a justification in itself. Did he feel no compunction to explain or justify his work, is this, in essence, courage? This is at the heart of why I am writing this. I strongly suspect I am envious of one thing—the NOT HAVING TO EXPLAIN ONE'S MOTIVES. The question: Why? can kill so much. The question: Why not? can yield such fruit, can be so liberating. It can also kill you but then both these questions can do that. The first seems more tormented, the second more free, and possibly hedonistic. So he was an Art Star who burned bright and furious. His art works were scrappy, flung together, angry, scatological, graphic, used seminal fluids, and were sexually explicit though hardly pornographic. I've no take on how enduring his legacy will be. He certainly hoed his own path but did so, I would suggest, always confident of support if he needed it. He came from a hugely wealthy family who were, are, art patrons. Did they support him, send him the occasional check? Did he categorically reject such props? Having left home to live on the streets in his early teens can we doubt he would have rejected offers of help if he were desperate? He may not have been given a leg up but there always was a leg to stand on if he needed it. I suspect decadence and privilege do go hand in hand. Nonetheless he was a talented artist. There is a beautiful autism at work. On Charlie Rose the other night VS Ramachandran, who has done remarkable work concerning ghost limbs and the brain, said if you pointed at something an autistic child might look at the end of your finger instead of the thing you were pointing out. Why do I apply this to Dash Snow. You tell me.

Career

Snow ran away from home and began living on the streets at 13 or 14, and began taking photographs, he said, as a record of places he might not remember the next day.[4]
He was included in the 2006 Wall Street Journal article titled "The 23-Year Old Masters", which selected ten top emerging US artists including Rosson Crow, Ryan Trecartin, Zane Lewis, and Keegan McHargue.[5]
The artist's photographic work is in a thematically similar mode to photographers Nan Goldin, Larry Clark, Ryan McGinley and Richard Billingham, often depicting scenes of a candid or illicit nature. Instances of sex, drug taking, violence and art-world pretentiousness are documented with disarming frankness and honesty, offering insight into the decadent lifestyle increasingly associated with young New York City artists and their social circles.
Some of Snow's recent collage-based work was characterized by the controversial practice of using his own semen as a material applied to or splashed across newspaper photographs of police officers and other authority figures. However, the suggestive nature of such works did not prevent them from being acquired by influential collectors such as Charles Saatchi, Anita Zabludowicz, Dakis Joannou, [6], The Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum [7].
He also wrote graffiti as part of the Irak Crew using the name "Sace". [8]
Snow exhibited in galleries and museums such as The Royal Academy in London, the Whitney Museum of American Art's 2006 Biennial, "God spoiled a perfect asshole when he put teeth in yer mouth", Peres Projects, "Day For Night", Deitch Projects, Saatchi Gallery[9], "Babylon"[10] at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and Bergen Kunsthall in Norway.
[edit]Family

A son of Taya Thurman and her former husband, Chris Snow, the artist was also a great-grandson of the founders of the Menil Collection, Dominique de Menil and John de Menil, French aristocrats who were heirs to fortunes based in textiles and oil-drilling equipment.[11] His maternal grandfather is Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, his maternal grandmother is set and costume designer Christophe de Menil, and an aunt is actress Uma Thurman. He has a brother, Maxwell, and a sister, Caroline.
In 1999 Snow married Agathe Aparru, now known as Agathe Snow, an artist.[11] According to Snow's New York Times obituary, this marriage ended in divorce.[3]
He had a daughter, Secret Aliester Ramirez Messenger Santa Creeper, by Jade Berreau, a model, actress, and photographer, in 2007.[12] (One source states the child's name is Secret Magic Nico.)[13]
[edit]Death

Snow died on the evening of July 13, 2009 at Lafayette House, a hotel in lower Manhattan.[2] His grandmother Christophe de Menil was quoted as saying that he died of a drug overdose.[3] Other sources indicated that the cause of his death is still under investigation.

Big History

Big History examines history on a large scale across long time frames through a multi-disciplinary approach.[1] Big History gives a focus on the alteration and adaptations in the human experience.[2] Big History is a discrete field of historical study that arose in the late 1980s. It is related to, but distinct from, world history[2], as the field examines history from the beginning of time to the present day. In some respects, the field is thus similar to the older universal history.

Big History looks at the past on all time scales, from the Big Bang to modernity, seeking out common themes and patterns. It uses a multi-disciplinary approach from the latest findings, such as biology, astronomy, geology, climatology, prehistory, archeology, anthropology, cosmology, natural history, and population and environmental studies. Big History arose from a desire to go beyond the specialized and self-contained fields that emerged in the 20th century and grasp history as a whole, looking for common themes across the entire time scale of history.[3][4] Conventionally, the study of history is typically limited to the written word and the systematic narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; yet this only encompasses the past 5,000 years or so and leaves out the vast majority of history and all events in time, in relation to humanity.
The first courses in Big History were experimental ones taught in the late 1980s by John Mears at Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas) and by David Christian at Macquarie University (Australia), and more recently at San Diego State University.[5][6] Since then, a number of other universities have offered similar courses. An important book in Big History was published in 1996 by Fred Spier entitled, The Structure of Big History: From the Big Bang until Today, which offers an ambitious defense of the project and constructs a unified account of history across all time scales. One notable text in Big History is David Christian's Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, which explores history from the first micro-seconds of the Big Bang, to the creation of the solar system, to the origins of life on earth, the evolution of humans, the agricultural revolution, modernity, and the 20th century. Christian examines large-scale patterns and themes, and provides perspective of time scales. Currently in the process is a text book on Big History for McGraw Hill by David Christian, Cynthia Brown and Craig Benjamin. Craig Benjamin teaches a course, Big History, at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan

Phonograph

Phonograph \Pho"no*graph\, n. [Phono- + -graph.]
1. A character or symbol used to represent a sound, esp. one
used in phonography. [archaic]
[1913 Webster]
For example a beetle in Native American picture writing might represent the sound it makes and not the beetle itself.
From Wikipedia:
The famous phonograph was the fourth device for recording and replaying sound. The term phonograph ("sound writer") is derived from the Greek words φωνή (meaning "sound" or "voice" and transliterated as phoné) and γραφή (meaning "writing" and transliterated as graphé). Similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings. The coinage, particularly the use of the -graph root, may have been influenced by the then-existing words phonographic and phonography, which referred to a system of phonetic shorthand; in 1852 The New York Times carried an advertisement for "Professor Webster's phonographic class", and in 1859 the New York State Teachers' Association tabled a motion to "employ a phonographic recorder" to record its meetings.

Asemic Writing

Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means “having no specific semantic content”.
Illegible, invented, or primal scripts (cave paintings, doodles, children’s drawings, etc.) are all influences upon asemic writing. But instead of being thought of as mimicry of preliterate expression, asemic writing can be considered as a postliterate style of writing that uses all forms of creativity for inspiration.
Some asemic writing has pictograms or ideograms, which suggest a meaning through their shape. Other forms are shapeless and exist as pure conception within the garden of imagination and experience.
Asemic writing has no verbal sense, though it may have clear textual sense. Through its formatting and structure, asemic writing may suggest a type of document and, thereby, suggest a meaning. The form of art is still writing, often calligraphic in form, and either depends on a reader’s sense and knowledge of writing systems for it to make sense, or can be understood through aesthetic intuition.
Asemic writing can also be seen as a relative perception, whereby unknown languages and forgotten scripts provide templates and platforms for new modes of expression.

From Wikipedia with thanks