Dash Snow says "Fuck the world" one last time. Image: Sweded.

Dearly Departed: New York hipster artist, Dash Snow, 1981-2009.

Cause Of Death: Heroin overdose.

Greatest Achievement: Being the biggest misfit in a clique of artists who were defined by their debauchery.

We could get through this week’s death pretty quickly: Dash Snow was an heir to a limitless fortune, which left him with enough security to disown his family and live the quintessential life of a modern bohemian artist, scarfing drugs, jacking off on newspapers and selling them to dazzled collectors, and convincing the art world that Polaroids of his beautiful friends getting obliterated constitute genius.

It’s not much more complicated than that, but Snow’s history is still interesting if only because it’s the real-life manifestation of a tragic cliché. Born into the Schlumberger oil dynasty, his great-grandmother Dominique de Menil was an art collector and patron, his grandfather was a Buddhist scholar, his grandmother was costume designer (and aunt to Uma Thurman) and his father was an acid burnout with whom he got tattoos.

Of course, Snow continually distanced himself from his elite heritage, leaving home in his teens and calling his supposedly estranged parents “scumbags” into his twenties (even though New York Magazine deduced that his mother was the only family member he avoided). He lived on the streets as his own kind of scumbag, using a Polaroid camera to record his nightly escapades because blackouts meant he’d forget what he did and where he went by morning. This weedy rich white boy started a graffiti crew called Irak and plastered his ‘Sace’ tag all over New York. Of course, fellow New York hipster artists Dan Colen and Ryan McGinley, themselves agent provocateurs but not from the privileged class, adopted him as a kindred spirit/performing monkey.

Snow was always more extreme than his compatriots – took more drugs, got in more fights, fucked more women, and almost incidentally took time to produce “art”. In his case, wanking on photos of cops and exhibiting them as “Fuck The Police” counted as art. He exhibited a collage of newspaper clippings of Saddam Hussein’s face, dusted with glitter (Snow had the dictator’s face tattooed on him). He constantly took orgiastic Polaroids. The debauched mythology worked. Charles Saatchi bought a sculpture of his for $500,000 and New York beard-strokers cheered the authenticity of his work.

But according to many newspaper profiles, and his friends, Snow’s lifestyle was truly his art: petty crime, outrageous behaviour, paranoia, drug abuse, starlet-fucking, and self-destruction. He married fellow artist Agathe Snow at 19, and they divorced soon after. He fathered a daughter to model, actress and photographer Jade Berreau called – no shit – Secret Aliester Ramirez Messenger Santa Creeper.

Snow was recently out of rehab when he overdosed, so often the case when junkies dry out and can’t handle their usual dose. It’s a pathetic way to die. And as stupid as her name is, it’s little Secret, whose father joined the 27 Club, that we should weep for.

He will be missed.