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Lot Essay
Spanning more than three metres in height, Les Debutantes (Pink and Black) (2016) is a monumental and captivating work from Claire Tabouret’s iconic series of the same name. Nine adolescent girls emerge from a cascade of raven draperies, composed of paint and fabric collage. A dazzling spectral underglow of fluorescent pink illuminates their forms, flickering with the rhythms of a nocturne. Their emotions are locked in the dark void of the canvas, while their piercing eyes gaze into the viewer’s own. The series was inspired by group photographs taken at the Debutante Ball—a customary rite of passage commemorating a young woman’s admission into high society. Begun in 2014, it represents a watershed moment in Tabouret’s continuous examination of youth and identity. Les Debutantes (Pink and Black) reveals the subtle friction between the young girls’ individual and collective identities, and the unseen force that ties them together on the brink of adulthood.
The present work was painted in 2016, shortly after Tabouret relocated to Los Angeles. Born in Pertuis, France, the artist gained recognition in the early 2010s and garnered much critical acclaim with her institutional exposures, notably her participation in a dual exhibition alongside Yoko Ono at the Villa Médicis, Rome in 2017. Part of a generation of painters who revived portraiture at the turn of the millennium, including Caroline Walker and Salman Toor, Tabouret balances figuration with elusive abstract techniques. Though based on photographs, the present composition is far from a simple reiteration of its sources. Instead, it captures what she calls ‘a palliative to everything I am feeling that isn’t actually visible in the photograph’ (C. Tabouret, quoted in L. Bismuth, ‘An Interview of Claire Tabouret by Lea Bismuth’, artist’s website, 7 February 2014). In the present work, Tabouret’s agitated brushstrokes and monochromatic palette veil any hint of time and place, transporting her subjects to an ethereal vicinity—a forest of faded fantasies and bygone memories.
Tabouret has drawn extensively upon Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault’s photographic works around costume and drapery. The voluminous gowns in Les Debutantes (Pink and Black) create a lyrical rhythm across the canvas, underpinning the social bonds—at once empowering and confining—shared by these young women. From beneath the all-over, sculptural field of fabric, glimpses of luminous pink emanate through the folds. They radiate towards the translucent skin of the characters, reminiscent of the shimmering reflection on the water in Claude Monet’s Nymphéas—a work that decisively informed Tabouret’s practice. The artist’s hallmark use of fluorescent tones is elegantly realised in this series. A wash of neon pigment is applied as the primary layer on the canvas before the scenes and subjects are painted with layers of darker shades, thus illuminating the picture from within. ‘Because the light comes from underneath,’ Tabouret once remarked, ‘you cannot really turn it off’ (C. Tabouret, quoted in J. Zara, ‘Claire Tabouret’s Art Triumphs with Subtle Feminism’, Galerie Magazine, 8 August 2017).
The present work was painted in 2016, shortly after Tabouret relocated to Los Angeles. Born in Pertuis, France, the artist gained recognition in the early 2010s and garnered much critical acclaim with her institutional exposures, notably her participation in a dual exhibition alongside Yoko Ono at the Villa Médicis, Rome in 2017. Part of a generation of painters who revived portraiture at the turn of the millennium, including Caroline Walker and Salman Toor, Tabouret balances figuration with elusive abstract techniques. Though based on photographs, the present composition is far from a simple reiteration of its sources. Instead, it captures what she calls ‘a palliative to everything I am feeling that isn’t actually visible in the photograph’ (C. Tabouret, quoted in L. Bismuth, ‘An Interview of Claire Tabouret by Lea Bismuth’, artist’s website, 7 February 2014). In the present work, Tabouret’s agitated brushstrokes and monochromatic palette veil any hint of time and place, transporting her subjects to an ethereal vicinity—a forest of faded fantasies and bygone memories.
Tabouret has drawn extensively upon Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault’s photographic works around costume and drapery. The voluminous gowns in Les Debutantes (Pink and Black) create a lyrical rhythm across the canvas, underpinning the social bonds—at once empowering and confining—shared by these young women. From beneath the all-over, sculptural field of fabric, glimpses of luminous pink emanate through the folds. They radiate towards the translucent skin of the characters, reminiscent of the shimmering reflection on the water in Claude Monet’s Nymphéas—a work that decisively informed Tabouret’s practice. The artist’s hallmark use of fluorescent tones is elegantly realised in this series. A wash of neon pigment is applied as the primary layer on the canvas before the scenes and subjects are painted with layers of darker shades, thus illuminating the picture from within. ‘Because the light comes from underneath,’ Tabouret once remarked, ‘you cannot really turn it off’ (C. Tabouret, quoted in J. Zara, ‘Claire Tabouret’s Art Triumphs with Subtle Feminism’, Galerie Magazine, 8 August 2017).