Art by Steve Masters 4

Read this series of posts from Part 1 

 

Steve Masters - Greasing The Saddle

This image can't be found in the beefcake publications of the sixties, it's far too suggestive. Master's title seems to imply this is a regular rendezvous for the cowboys, a male brothel perhaps, which would account for the dodgy wallpaper and the rather deprecating title!   

 

'The saddle' doles out lubricant to a cowboy whose intense gaze and thin smile has a pretty scary look about it. Particularly when he's holding his belt like he wants to use it on someone's ass. In fact, you can interpret the image as showing that he just has done so, the rent boy rubbing his bruises rather than lubing himself. Luckily, the other cowboys seem up for fun rather than tormenting their steed. 

 

I've seen this image with the eyes of the two central cowboys blanked out (like the nipple shapes here). I'm inclined to think that could be the original version, because I can't think why anyone would make such an alteration, retrospectively. To modern eyes, it adds a menace that is coldly inhuman rather than lustful. The image above is a more complete version anyway, showing the bed in the foreground. That would have been a controversial ingredient in its day, sex in a bed is intimate and personal, not just a discharge (for which heterosexuals could be excused).

 

The styling of this image has a look of the 50s about it, the chair design being a part of that. The 'hollowed out' drawing style was later the trademark of the British artist, Bill Ward, in his cartoons.

 

 

Steve Masters - Men In a Bed

 

This picture illustrates perfectly the heightened intimacy of getting into a bed with a man. They are not actually having sex, but it's strongly implied. This looks like a hotel room so we can bung in the word 'seedy' as well. 

 

The sailor with his cap still on and sweetheart tattoo epitomises casual, 'rough trade' but this looks pretty affectionate and genuine. The highly stylised, drawing style has produced a picture that is more sensual than might be expected for such sparseness. It cocks a snook at the Peeping Tom in the background, conservatively dressed and looking very disapproving. 

 

 

Steve Masters -Matelot

 

I've censored this image to meet the blog rules, 

but you can see it unspoiled on 'X'

 

This early image in the same style is self-explanatory, a bit of R&R between men of disparate sizes and exceptional physiques. The title of this piece is probably derived from the cockleshell hat, the rear man is wearing. Masters associates it with fishermen in other images. He's also wearing a (just visible) rolled-up singlet with horizontal hoops, a nautical style (a la Gaultier, below). 

 

The background imagery looks like conventional room furnishing, apart from a rope-like construct that disappears through an elaborate hole in the wall like an anchor cable. The subs raised arms give a 'come and get me' tang of the bordello again.

 

Matelot Hoops

  

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There's a further, early image in this style at my 'X' account that ceases to have any meaning if it's censored, but it's actually more interesting for its fetish ingredients than its dix. It features a biker with a captive in a baseball cap (subtly roped round his ankles). Masters uses his 'double vision' technique to disguise a sharp object as a book.

 

 Masters' proclivity for S&M is well-documented and his early images as 'Kurt' feature leather dungeon scenes, which unfortunately are too extreme to show here. The examples I have are poor quality reproductions anyway. 

 

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Steve Masters - Cop and Biker

This image bridges the gap to Masters' better known style. The biker cum matelot reels back in wonder at the cop's enormous package, which has a pouch hidden in it, like a kid's picture puzzle. The cop's assets are supplemented by a truly 'bent' handlebar, which curls over his hip like a spare part at an orgy. 

 

The biker is wearing a matelot striped top that is sexily cropped. His jeans are already undone, but both men seem half undressed anyway, as their clothes seem to dissolve away below shoulder level, revealing nipples and abs. A bulbous fuel tank beneath the biker, between his thighs, signals the erotic momentum. 

 

 

Steve Masters - 'Lands End'

 This seems like a typical 60s surfer image at first sight, more wall hanging than erotica, with tasteful nudity. In fact, the two protagonists in the foreground are bikers, one a serious enough enthusiast to wear goggles. His discarded clothing, meticulously detailed in the foreground, is erotic in itself. No underpants! 

 

Masters employs a hybrid outline/shaded technique for the clothing that is fascinating technically. There's a slightly unreal quality that contrasts with the wearer's realistic nudity. The towel trailing between his legs looks wet and seems to show an appropriate outline beneath, but it's well disguised. 

 

The middle figure seems to be gazing out to sea as he undresses. His cap is not the conventional biker style, but more that of a seafaring captain, the nautical theme Masters often returned to. However, the jock suggests he's not pondering the mysteries of the Ocean. He's holding his belt stretched tight, suggesting tension (and perhaps a desire to unleash it). The end emerges from his clenched fist upright and looking like a banana, but I don't think it's his lunch. Not literally. His clothes also dissolve into outlines.

 

 The reclining figure in the background probably is a surfer or sunbather. There's a collage-like disconnect between him and the other figures that suggests to me that he, or his (sanitised) tackle, is the true object of the middle biker's attention. As though these are sketches for a larger, wide landscape picture.

 

I must admit I didn't know where Land's End was in the States*, although it turned out I'd actually been there a few years back. It's on the Pacific Coast side of San Francisco, not far from the Golden Gate Bridge. A popular cruising area, I believe.

 

*My efforts to find the answer to this seemingly simple question showed just how much Google has lost the plot as a search engine in recent years. It's much vaunted AI feature insisted there was no such place in the US, but, surprise, surprise, there was a clothing company of that name that I ought to know everything about. 

 

Thankfully, Wikipedia came to the rescue further down the page with that priceless commodity Google is no longer interested in - information. I can't wait for someone to launch a proper search engine again that supports research rather than advertising, I'd be willing to pay for it.

 

Steve Masters -Showers

I love the secret bottom-touching in this playful and fairly well-known locker room image. It's the best example I have seen of a coloured Masters picture. Authentic or not, I don't know, but it hasn't come from a magazine, it's an original picture. It looks as if it has been exposed to water damage, but that has fortuitously created a compensating effect of steaminess.

 

Read this series of posts from Part 1