STEVE MASTERS (MIKE MIKSCHE)
AMERICAN, 1925–1964
Steve Masters (Mike Miksche). “Wanted!” Charcoal on Trace vellum. Offered in AFTER DARK on 26 February 2026.
Born David Leo Miksche, Mike Miksche (1925-1964) was raised in Medford, Oregon, in 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 to practice as a commercial illustrator on the recommendation of his partner, the actor Dick Davis. While in New York, Miksche began designing window displays and fashion illustrations for major American department stores including Bloomingdale’s and Saks 5th Avenue. He also 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 Torchy 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. Miksche also moved in the social circle surrounding the openly gay poet Glenway Wescott (1901-1987) and was later the subject for a series of photos by Wescott’s ex-partner, George Platt Lynes (1907–1955).
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 scene 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 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 Kinsey Institute.
Steve Masters (Mike Miksche). “Wanted!” Charcoal on Trace vellum. Offered in AFTER DARK on 26 February 2026.
Beginning in the 1960s, Miksche published homoerotic illustrations for physique magazines under the pseudonym Steve Masters (whose tongue-in-cheek initials spell S&M). Miksche's softcore illustrations of hypermasculine men both referenced and codified the aesthetics of the developing leather and biker subcultures in the US He was a regular contributor to Physique Pictorial alongside other queer contemporaries such as Tom of Finland, Etienne, George Quaintance, and The Hun.
In his private life, Miksche struggled with psychological issues and depression. He passed away as a result of a possible drug overdose in 1964. Upon his death, his widow destroyed the majority of his 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. A collection of Miksche’s work, The Art of Steve Masters, was published posthumously 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. [1]
Notes
[1] Thomas Waugh, Out/Lines: Underground Gay Graphics Before Stonewall (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000), pp. 83-84.
Contributors
Barry Oliver
Cataloger, LGBTQ+ Art & Material Culture
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