ARTISTS OF AFTER DARK
Our catalogs are home to some of the great forgotten figures in queer 20th century subcultures. Many gay artists aren’t remembered for their contributions. To learn more about these view our artist bios here.
MIKE MIKSCHE “STEVE MASTERS”
AMERICAN, 1925 - 1964
Born David Leo Miksche, Mike Miksche was born in Medford, Oregon, to a family of Czech origin. He served in the United States Air Force as a pilot in the 526th Bombardment Squadron during WWII. Upon completing his wartime service, he studied at the University of Oregon in Eugene and relocated to New York as a commercial illustrator on the recommendation of his partner, the actor Dick Davis. Miksche began designing window displays and fashion illustrations for major American department stores including Bloomingdale’s and Saks 5th Avenue and worked with the celebrated French-American industrial designer Raymond Loewy (1893-1986). He married his agent Elaine Brown in 1955. She also represented the erotic cartoonist Bill Ward (1919-1998) who created the risqué good girl character Mische in adult comics. Miksche continued to freelance window design and department store publicity and published commercial illustrations for American sportswear brands and David D. Doniger & Company. Me moved in the social circle surrounding the openly gay poet Glenway Wescott (1901-1987) whose ex-partner George Platt Lynes (1907- 1955) photographed Miksche.
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Beyond his public persona, Miksche is best-known for his homoerotic illustrations of men which prominently feature sadomasochistic (S&M) themes. During the 1950s and 1960s, the artist was a regular in the gay S&M underground in New York. The famed American sexologist Alfred Kinsey (1884-1956) was first introduced to the S&M scene by Miksche through his connection with the openly gay poet Glenway Wescott (1901-1987). Miksche donated a series of erotic drawings in charcoal depicting explicit gay sex for the art collection of Kinsey’s Institute for Sex Research in Bloomington, Alabama. For sexological research and documentation purposes, Kinsey invited Miksche to be filmed engaging in S&M acts with the tattooist and pornographer Samuel Steward (1909-1993), the first film of its kind at the Institute for Sex Research. Beginning in the 1960s, Miksche published homoerotic illustrations for physique magazines under the pseudonym Steve Masters (whose tongue-in-cheek initials spell S&M).To evade censorship, these publications facilitated the erotic viewing of nude male bodies for clandestine gay audiences during the golden age of physique magazines. Miksche’s softcore illustrations of hypermasculine men visually referenced the intertwined underground leather and biker subcultures. He was a regular contributor to Physique Pictorial alongside his fellow queer contemporaries Tom of Finland (1920-1957), Dom Orejudos (1933-1991) under the pen name “Etienne”, George Quaintance (1902-1957) and Bill Schmeling (1938-2019) aka “The Hun”.
In his private life, Miksche struggled with psychological issues and depression. He passed away as a result of a drug overdose in 1964. Upon his death, his widow destroyed much of the homoerotic and S&M-themed graphic works. To this day, what is left of Miksche’s body of queer erotic art survives through donations made by the artist himself and others to the collections of the Kinsey Institute and the Leather Archives & Museum in Chicago. The Art of Steve Masters was published posthumously in circa 1970. Professor Emeritus of Film Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality at Concordia University, Thomas Waugh has credited Steve Masters (aka Mike Miksche) as one of “the stars of pre-Stonewall underground” gay visual culture.*
Miksche as ‘The Marlboro Man’
REX
AMERICAN, 1943 - 2024
Rex was an American illustrator whose black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings defined the visual aesthetic of the gay S&M and leather subcultures during the 1970s and 1980s. Based in San Francisco, Rex’s artwork is defined by depictions of masculine archetypes such as policemen, prison guards, and bikers, often exploring the raw and unapologetic elements of gay male sexuality. Through his art, Rex documented the pre-AIDS cruising culture of dive bars, alleyways, bathhouses, and motels in New York and San Francisco.
Rex first came to prominence in 1978 with a one-man show at Fey-Way Studios in San Francisco, a gallery opened by Robert Opel to showcase the talent of the city’s gay art scene. Jack Fritscher, editor-in-chief of the leather-interest magazine Drummer, first met Rex at the exhibition. He worked alongside Drummer colleagues Bill Ward and Tom of Finland, both influential artists in the gay fetish community. He contributed to Stroke, Inches, Honcho, Macho and countless other magazines. His work had a notable impact on photographers like Robert Mapplethorpe. As Fritscher has recalled, "Rex is to drawing what Mapplethorpe is to photography."
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Tellingly, Rex designed the hardcore interior décor of New York’s Mineshaft BDSM club just two years prior to Mapplethorpe’s appointment as its resident photographer.
His unique pointillist style became virtually synonymous with the visual culture of the gay community. He designed postcards, pulp novel covers, and publicity materials for leather stores, sex shops, and gay nightclubs, including a notable campaign for the poppers brand BOLT. Most famously, his graphics were famously featured in the 1980 movie Cruising, starring Al Pacino, and on a T-shirt worn by Freddie Mercury. Rex self-published standalone portfolios of his prints continually throughout his career with provocative titles such as Mannspielen (Man Games). Famous for his camera-shyness, Rex rarely allowed his photograph to be taken. In the early years of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Rex abruptly ceased producing new drawings. This shift likely stemmed from the stigma surrounding gay sexuality, which, during that time, became a signifier of death. Rex subsequently made the decision to relocate to Europe where, in Amsterdam, he passed away in 2024.
*Jack Fritscher, “Rex Inventing Rex”, “Rex Requiem: Corrupt Beyond Innocence", in Inventing the Gay Gaze: Rex, Peter Berlin, Arthur Tress, and Crawford Barton, p. 15, at JackFritscher.com.
Photograph by Jack Fritscher -
Original publication: Bay Area Reporter
Miksche as ‘The Marlboro Man’