Etienne's 'Car Wash' Reinterpreted

A Clean Slave Is A Happy Slave

A while ago, I posted Planet Gay's AI makeover of the desert trek scene from Etienne's 'Sailor Beware'. Here he recreates a scene from 'Car Wash' by the same artist. 

 

In the original picture, This scene was the middle section of a triptych of 3 related scenes which were joined together in a continuous panorama (see enlarged).
 

Apart from renaming the image, Planet Gay's version stays pretty faithful to the original composition, but he's taken out the military flavour, which, to be fair, is only indicated in the (non-colourised) original by the sergeant's stripes on the far right and three, not very obvious, dog tags (see if you can spot them!). The overall result is impressive but less spectacularly so than his Sailor Beware image, which benefitted from having a less complicated, easily reproducible setting, i.e. a sandy desert.   

 

 

 

There have been previous attempts to separate and colour the fascinating ingredients of Etienne's image, whose sheer width defies easy inspection on a computer screen. This one, I believe, was done by Etienne (Stephen) himself. With a paintbrush by the look of it. Quite a lot of detail has been lost in the colouring process*.

 

You'll notice, that he has left out the two figures to the left, the men holding the mop and a stick device. Strictly speaking, it is correct to omit them. Those two figures actually belong to a different station, not 'Body Scrub'....

 

 'Teeth Cleaning and Mouth Disinfecting' (clearly labelled as Station 2) is sandwiched in between the 'Rectal Flush' and 'Body Scrub' stations, which each have their own, eye-catching, restraint device. Arguably, Station 2 consists only of a single man with a toothbrush strapped to an irrigation device. The foreground figure with the mop might equally belong to Station 1 (below), but it's tempting to imagine that disinfectant-soaked mop being thrust into the mouth of the unlucky client to his right! 

 

In this framing, Mr Mop doesn't really seem to be very closely involved with Station 1. He and his pants-packing buddy seem to be waiting, quite impatiently, to get stuck into the next unfortunate on the processing line. Or perhaps he's just the cleaner, having a fag while he waits to clean up the mess left by the other guys. They are obviously having a lot of fun and taking their time! 

 

You might be wondering at this point, if these are stations 1 and 2, surely there are two more stations on the right. Aren't there?

 

 

 

There are indeed two more stations to come, Station 3 - 'Body Scrub', which is the section re-imagined by Planet Gay, and the fourth station 'Lubrication' which presumably does have a number, but we can't see it, because it's hidden behind a tin of grease. 

 

You'll notice also that this device is not slotted neatly into the line, it stands forward, slightly angled. The angling is justified by the artist's desire to clearly show what the operative's hand is doing, but there is a distinct sense of it being squeezed in 

(the image, I mean, not just the hand!). 

 

By obscuring its number, Etienne seems to be deliberately adding to the confusion about the number of stations, but it is more likely that it was originally drawn as a separate image in its own right. It wouldn't have needed to be given a station number, then. Hence, the difference in style and inclusion of a supervisor. It might even have been the starting point for the whole idea. 

 

If you look back at the wide, panoramic view at the top of this post, there is a distinct sense of it becoming increasingly crowded from left to right and the distinct impression that the last station has been shoe-horned into a limited space. There's also another clue to that, the figure on the extreme right, partly visible and showing his back. Now look back at the extreme left of the wide image. He's there, too, assisting in the suspension of the first victim. 

 

Etienne has conceived this piece as a continuous frieze, as though it was intended to decorate the inside of a circular space or to be fitted around the outside of a column or cylindrical object. A sort of gay version of the Parthenon marbles. I have no idea what his ultimate intention was, but it tells us that he was working to a rigidly defined length and when it came to fitting the last piece into the jigsaw, the last Station, he hadn't allowed quite enough space for it. Giving it a number was probably the last thing on his mind.

 

Leaving not enough space or too much is a common mistake for an artist and an easy one to make, especially if your creative juices are driven by the fantasy, but in a commercial context, it is unforgivable. In his 'History of Gay Art', Felix Falkon criticised Etienne's tendency to not plan or finish his images properly. However, he seems to have successfully salvaged this piece, and you might argue that the final structure creatively reflects the viewer's increasing erotic tension as he traverses the scene from left to right. Etienne was a genius and a flawed masterpiece is far better than uninspiring correctness.  

 

~ 

 

I've posted another of the colourised segments, 

'Greasing Station', on X  

 

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There are several other posts of Planet Gay on mitchmen
simply search for PlanetGayComic for the latest additions  

Planet Gay's current work is video oriented and web locations include PlanetGayComic on X and PlanetGay onYouTube, but I prefer his non-video, Deviant Art Gallery

 ~

 

There are numerous posts about Etienne here as well,

check out my Etienne index for articles mainly about him,

a general search on Etienne will bring up every reference.

 

There's also an 'Exclusively Etienne' Google Group 

that's easy to join.