A film about how the life of a protest artist has a price to pay.
The life of Dash Snow, a late New York artist who worked with photography, collage, and graffiti and sometimes used his sperm for making art, is a godsend for biopics. Born into a wealthy family of art collectors, his work was exhibited at the prestigious Whitney Biennial when he was twenty-four. At twenty-seven, he died of an overdose in a hotel room. New York Magazine once dedicated a huge article to Dash and his fellow artists, christening them “Warhol’s kids” for their enormous contribution to the city’s culture. New York in the 2000s was indeed the New York of Dash Snow: he was a legend, “he was fearless, and he participated to the fullest extent in all of the extremes of this town. […] He was a child […] He was always the first one to introduce himself in a crowd of strangers”, wrote his girlfriend, photographer and the author of this documentary, Cheryl Dunn in the Interview magazine obituary. Immediacy, protest, and marginality were the life of Snow and the plot of his art, but the moments when he could be himself, without regard to the status of a successful artist, ended quickly. The best of them are gathered in this film.
Moments Like This Never Last
Dir. Cheryl Dunn
USA, Canada, 2020. 96 min. 18+