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, signed by the artist, this scene was the middle section of a triptych of 3 related scenes which were joined together in a continuous panorama 

Full Size View 

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 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 also exists a colourised version, created by Hardtop (I believe). He added a figure at the right and left extremes to facilitate the creation of an animated, endlessly repeating sweep. The figure is derived from the operative in charge of the Body Scrub Station. I have to give him credit for a seamless alteration.  

 

 

Etienne produced a coloured version himself. The original hangs in the Etienne Auditorium at the Leather Archives & Museum in Chicago. This is a segment from it, otherwise the sheer width defies easy inspection on a computer screen. You can see quite a lot of detail has been lost in the 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 (see 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. It seems that Etienne was working to a fixed 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 may not be forgiven. In his 'History of Gay Art', Felix Falkon criticised Etienne's tendency to not plan or finish his images properly. Nevertheless, 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.  

 

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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

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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.