Stephen Lloyd Varble (1946 – January 6, 1984) was an American performance artist, playwright, and fashion designer in lower Manhattan during the 1970s. His work challenged both mainstream conceptions of gender and exposed the materialism of the established, institutionalized art world.
Life Varble was born in Owensboro, Kentucky in 1946. Varble was raised in a deeply religious household by Methodist parents. He is quoted as saying "my parents wanted me to be a missionary but I became a monster instead." He attended Daviess County High School and later went on to continue his education at the University of Kentucky where he received his Bachelor of Arts and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honors society. He moved to New York in 1969 to attend Columbia University, where he received a Master of Fine Arts in Film Direction in 1971. While in college, he became deeply involved in the local LGBT community.
In the early 1970s, Varble was a participant in the network of New York Fluxus artists due to his romantic relationship with Geoffrey Hendricks. In collaboration with Hendricks, he created a number of performances including works for Charlotte Moorman's Avant-Garde Festivals, Jacki Apple's "Identity Exchange" (1973), and Alison Knowles's Identical Lunch (1973).2011 Geoff Hendricks Interview with Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle at http://sexecology.org/research-writing/geoffrey-hendricks/, Identical Lunch: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/152702, and 1972 Simultaneous Performance for Avant-Garde Festival: https://www.eai.org/supporting-documents/344/w.1241.0 The two also performed in Europe in 1972, including Silent Meditation for the International Carnival of Experimental Sound (ICES), Hybrids at the Arts Club in London, and Silent Mediation for the Neue Galerie Aachen.See Geoffrey Hendricks interviewed by David J. Getsy 20 April 2016 at https://vimeo.com/177397203
While Varble publicly identified as a man, some anecdotal evidence and personal writings imply that his conception of his own gender was less rigid. Due to this, some interpret Varble's gender nonconforming art to be public exploration of fluid identity.Moss, Hilary. "A '70s Performance Artist Finds a New Audience." New York Times T Magazine, 26 September 2018.
He unabashedly opposed many aspects of mainstream capitalism, particularly wealth inequality and the commodification of art. This disapproval fueled many of his most impactful works. In 1977, Varble retreated from the public eye and moved in with his lover Daniel Cahill. During the final seven years of his life, he dedicated himself to filming an unfinished epic titled Journey to the Sun. He died from HIV/AIDS-related complications on January 6, 1984, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City at the age of 38.,,
Marie Debris Stephen often adopted a feminine persona by the name of Marie Debris, a play on the materials used to create his costumes. He did not see this as drag or "gay art", instead he saw it as a way to combat the concept of the gender binary. Marie Debris was Varble's alter ego and a way to break out of the traditional gender binary. Varble, evolved this persona into his alter ego, even though he identifies as a man, he would often dress as a woman in order demonstrate gender non conformity. He often spoke and wrote about having a woman's mind within a man's body. He often struggled with the idea of the gender binary; he found it difficult to only identify within one of two genders. He used his performance art in order to experience a creative form of gender expression, this helped him to explore his gender identity. He claimed that it was easier for him to do this as a public spectacle than it was for him to do it in his own private, personal space.
Artistic career
While in graduate school, Varble completed the book The Elegant Auctioneers for publication by Hill & Wang. The majority of the book was authored by Wesley Towner, with Varble writing the final chapters and editing of the manuscript after Towner's death in 1968. The book is a history of art collecting and art auctioneering in the United States from the late nineteenth-century to the 1950s and 60s. He also assisted the young art historian Douglas Crimp with the lighting of his first exhibition, a show of Agnes Martin's work at the School of Visual Arts in 1971.Douglas Crimp, Before Pictures (Brooklyn: Dancing Foxes Press, 2016), 57.
In the early 1970s, Varble also worked briefly for Andy Warhol's Interview magazineFor example, "I am James Purdy," interview by Stephen Varble, Interview (December 1972): 28-29. After receiving a grant from the City University of New York, he directed and produced the vocational film Heavy Duty: A Film Study of the Classroom Paraprofessional (1971). He was active as a playwright in the early 1970s, and his Delicate Champions was put on as part of an experimental series at the Forum at Lincoln Center in 1971. In 1973, Varble directed his play Silent Prayer at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village of Manhattan (14–18, 21–25 March 1973). The production was designed by Geoffrey Hendricks (who also played the silent "God" character in the play), with music by David Walker (an abolitionist and writer who fought for freedom, education, and religion) and lights by Laura Rambaldi. In addition to writing and directing the play, Varble also designed the costumes for the production (with assistance from John Eric Broaddus).La MaMa Archives Digital Collections. "Production: Silent Prayer (1973)". Accessed August 14, 2018. Notably, Eric Concklin, a regular at La MaMa and first director of Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy, starred in the role of the father.Robert Viagas, "Eric Concklin, First Director of Torch Song Trilogy Plays, Dies in NYC," Playbill (6 December 2017). http://www.playbill.com/article/eric-concklin-first-director-of-torch-song-trilogy-plays-dies-in-nyc
Stephen Varble's first street performances were tame, compared to his most iconic works. Early outings feature him walking through Manhattan blindfolded, made vulnerable to the world around him. He also created a dress from slides of Hendrick's family, metaphorically claiming his past.Cotter, Holland, "Stephen Varble: The Street Was His Stage, the Dress Was His Weapon," New York Times (11 January 2019): C15, C20.Varble became most known in the mid-1970s for his public interventions in genderqueer costumes made from street trash, food waste, and found objects; widely referred to as "gutter art." This form had meaning behind the creation, further adding to its value. After breaking up with Hendricks, Varble became increasingly interested in creating confrontational events that disrupted business and that presented him in costumes that complicated assumptions about gender and class, not only within the art world but society at large. The works that brought him to public notoriety were his "Costume Tours of New York", which involved Varble leading onlookers through unauthorized tours of SoHo galleries, boutiques, and museums. He targeted sites of luxury commerce, and his performances attacked issues of class and gender.See David J. Getsy, "Rubbish and Dreams: The Genderqueer Performance Art of Stephen Varble," The Archive [of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art] 62 (Winter 2017): 3-7. While his costumes often took the form of dresses, they would also combine traditionally male and female elements together. For example, one of the most iconic images of Varble features him wearing long strands of pearls draped down his hips and legs, contrasted by a pearlescent codpiece ironically fashioned to look like male genitalia. With these elements, Varble draws attention to things the viewer may expect him to hide, asserting his rejection of binary gender roles.[Adrian-Diaz, Jenna. "The Rediscovered Legacy of Soho’s Most Outrageous Genderqueer Performance Artist". Vulture. September 26, 2018. https://www.vulture.com/2018/09/stephen-varble-sohos-most-outrageous-performance-artist.html.]
His most notorious such intervention was the Chemical Bank Protest in which he confronted a bank that had allowed a check to be forged against his account. Wearing a costume composed of netting, fake money, breasts made from condoms filled with cow's blood, and a toy fighter plane as a codpiece, he entered a Chemical Bank and demanded that he be reimbursed for the money that was stolen from him. Upon being rebuffed, he punctured the condoms with a fountain pen and used the cow's blood to sign checks for $0,000,00.00, or 'none million dollars'. According to some sources, his outburst was met with applause from visitors to the bank. Shortly thereafter, Varble wrote to the bank offering to become Chemical Bank's PR representative and demanded an outrageous salary. This offer was quickly rejected. The novelist Fernanda Eberstadt was Varble's protégé in these years, and recalled some of his performances in a memoir published in 2018.Fernanda Eberstadt, "I Bite My Friends," Granta 144 (August 2018) https://granta.com/i-bite-my-friends/
In 1975, he produced a series of performances called "Gutter Art", which was performed in front of various high class boutiques. "Gutter Art" consisted of Varble stopping outside in a limousine, which was provided by his dedicated patron Morihiro Miyazaki, dressed in elaborate silk gowns. He would then retrieve dishes and silverware from its trunk, douse them in black ink, then sit in the gutter and wash them. This biting commentary on class inequality was highly controversial, and garnered him both positive and negative attention.[Werther, Janet. "Discovering Stephen Varble". The MIT Press. Volume 41, no. 3, September, 2019. 17-27.]
Varble had two exhibitions during his lifetime. First, he staged one for himself in on the eve of his eviction from his loft on Franklin Street, New York, in 1976. For its Gala Ending, he put on a collaborative performance with the assistance of Warhol stars and performance artists, including Mario Montez, Jackie Curtis, Agosto Machado, Taylor Mead, Ruth Truth, and John Eric Broaddus.Gregory Battcock, "Divitiae Virum Faciunt," SoHo Weekly News (May 1976): 18. This performance included, among other things, a giant pink satin skirt which allegedly covered most of the loft. Attendees joined Varble in tearing the skirt to shreds.Getsy, David J. "Stephen Varble's Xerographic Dreams", in Stephen Varble: An Antidote to Nature's Ruin on this Heavenly Globe, Prints and Video from the Early 1980s, exh. cat. (Lexington, Kentucky: Institute 193, 2018), 3-28. Second, he had a single commercial gallery exhibition in 1977 when Brooks Jackson Iolas Gallery in New York put on what Varble antagonistically titled The Awful Art Show.Discussed in a 2016 lecture by David Getsy, "Gutter Art: Stephen Varble and Genderqueer Performance on the Streets of 1970s New York" at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. When informed that he would be required to include artwork that could be sold, Varble produced chaotic line drawings, complete with anti-capitalist text. Each drawing was priced absurdly high to ensure that no one would even consider purchasing them.Varble was also a subject for many famous photographers, including Peter Hujar, Jimmy De Sana, Allan Tannenbaum, Jack Mitchell, Fred McDarrah, Greg Day, Rose Hartman, and Anton Perich.