BONUS NUMBER 71: THE REDISCOVERED ART OF STEVE MASTERS

(Did You Sleep With the Models?)

The title of my article on Steve Masters was relevant in 1982, when I wrote this feature for Mandate. At the time, his art was indeed “lost” in the sense of known only to a few for whom it was an underground phenomenon. More information has emerged in recent years about the artist, and one of his works went on sale in 2021 at the Swann Auction Galleries in New York for an estimated price of $2,000-$3,000.

Masters’ real name was Michael Miksche. He was born in 1925 and died either in 1964 or 1965. This biographical note appeared in the Swann catalogue:

Miksche served as an Air Force flight captain before becoming a fashion illustrator. Under the pseudonym Steve Masters, he created erotic, mostly S&M-centric art. He was commissioned by the Kinsey Institute to appear in films demonstrating sadomasochistic sex acts, mainly with the tattoo artist and writer Samuel M. Steward. After a long battle with depression, he committed suicide in 1965. The bulk of his work is held by both the Kinsey Institute and the Leather Archives and Museum.

According to the gay writer Glenway Wescott (1901-1987), Miksche “was a giant Paul Bunyan type, very strong, with a magnificent physique. He had gone to war at about twenty, and within a year he was in command of four or five jet bombers, and he went on two flights a night over Berlin. At that age he hadn't had homosexual inclinations and didn't have much experience with women. One of the men in his flight crew was in love with him and confessed it. And Michael just said, ‘This is all nonsense’ ”

 

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Also by Steve Masters