Tabboo! - New Now New York Tuesday, March 12, 2024 | Phillips

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  • “Coming from a small rural town in Massachusetts, my beautiful Emerald City never ceases to amaze me…”
     —Tabboo!

    Multidisciplinary artist and performer Stephen Tashjian, otherwise known by his drag moniker Tabboo!, is anything but unknown. A staple of New York’s East Village scene for more than 40 years, Tabboo! has been an artist all his life – from working as a professional puppeteer in New England as a teenager in the ‘70s, to selling paintings to Elton John and Gianni Versace in the mid- ‘90s. Yet the past five years have marked a turning point for Tabboo!, spurred by the artist’s solo exhibition Cityscapes, which was concurrently shown at Karma and Gordon Robichaux in 2022. Although Untitled, New York Skyline was not included in this seminal exhibition, this captivating painting gives visual testimony to the artist’s quintessentially New York aesthetic.

     

    Born in 1959, Tabboo! rose to prominence during the 1980s through New York City’s underground drag scene. Moving to the city at age 23, the artist immediately was drawn to the intoxicatingly gritty nature of downtown New York, where he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Nan Goldin and Jack Pierson. Soon enough, the artist found a way to combine his drag career with his artistic ambitions by painting cityscapes for the backdrops of drag performances. Over four decades later, Tabboo!’s zeal for the city remains steadfast – with the artist still living in the very same Alphabet City apartment that these skylines are painted from.

     

    Untitled, New York Skyline, a misty haze of blues, blacks and greys punctuated by dazzling points of neon, pays homage to these early backdrops. Rendered in a washy manner, Tabboo! suggests his beloved city through color and general form, conjuring a temporal vision of New York. As the artist has said regarding his cityscapes, “it’s a lot looser than painting friends, because I don’t have to be so ‘realistic.’ It’s more an essence.”i

     

    Tabboo! opened his first exhibition at Karma’s Los Angeles space in 2023 with the exhibition Nothing but blue skies from now on, which was on view through September. His work is on view in the exhibition The Myth of Normal: A Celebration of Authentic Expression at the MassArt Art Museum, Boston, though May 19, 2024.

     

    i “40 Years Later, New York Is Still Tabboo!’s Favorite Muse,” Interview Magazine, March 21, 2022, online.

    • Provenance

      Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist circa 2010)
      Gifted by the above to the present owner

4

Untitled, New York Skyline

signed and dated "Tabboo! Stephen Tashjian 1997 Tabboo! Stephen Tashjian 1997" on the reverse
acrylic and glitter on canvas
18 1/4 x 26 1/8 in. (46.4 x 66.4 cm)
Executed in 1997.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$15,000 - 20,000 

Sold for $22,860

Contact Specialist

Avery Semjen
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now Sale
T +1 212 940 1207
asemjen@phillips.com
 

New Now

New York Auction 12 March 2024