Who was Etienne?

An artist who chronicled an era

We're blessed today with an abundance of talented artists who portray our community and our kinks in every conceivable way and in every available medium.

It wasn't so in the early days of our community and most art was often underground and anonymous and as such we've lost much of it to vagaries of life on the fringe through destruction or ignorance of the importance we would one day assign to erotic leather art.

There were a fair number of mostly anonymous artists back then but a couple of names rise the surface and we're fortunate enough to possess a large and (now) well-cared for collection of their works.  Tom of Finland is certainly well-known to most of us and his iconic, endowed leathermen influenced generations of us.  Another artist that I've always been fascinated with is Etienne and the article here by Paul Varnell of the Chicago Free Press is a good outline of his life and art.

Dom Orejudos (1933-1991), who used the pseudonyms Stephen (his middle name) or Etienne (French for Stephen), created the posters for the enterprises of his personal and business partner entrepreneur Chuck Renslow, who founded Kris Studio, which produced male erotica, opened Man’s Country bathhouse and took over ownership of the Gold Coast leather bar in 1960, eventually moving it to its best-known location on North Clark Street. Most relevantly for the exhibit, Renslow was founder of the International Mr. Leather contest in 1979.

Orejudos (the name is Filipino) was a man of many talents. Primarily he was a dancer and choreographer with the Illinois Ballet Company, as well as dance companies in Denver and New Orleans. But he was also a nationally known erotic artist and played violin in one of Chicago’s several orchestras.

According to Thomas Waugh’s history of early gay erotica, “Out/Lines” (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002), Orejudos began drawing homoerotic scenes while he was still in high school. Early on he began contributing to the pre-Stonewall gay “physique” magazines such as Tomorrow’s Man, Adonis, Physique Pictorial and The Young Physique. When Renslow founded the physique magazine Mars in 1963, Orejudos was a regular contributor.

Orejudos did more than erotica. Male Hide Leather co-owner Bob Maddox owned two paintings by Orejudos, one of a Roman charioteer, the other of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, a venerable subject in art history. Maddox recently donated both to the Leather Archives and Museum. According to Renslow, Orejudos also did several portraits of friends; there is even a “portrait” of Renslow’s dog. 

But his best-known works are undoubtedly the wall paintings he did for the Gold Coast, some later moved to the Chicago Eagle, a kind of successor to the Gold Coast that Renslow opened in 1993. One of the Gold Coast paintings was included in a recent historical survey of Chicago artists at the Chicago History Museum.

Not all of the models for the drawings and paintings are known. According to Renslow, Orejudos often worked from pictures when not drawing on his own fantasies. He appears to have used himself as a model occasionally, however: One drawing included in Waugh’s book shows a nude, well-muscled artist, presumably Orejudos, using a mirror to create a self-portrait.

One known model was Dirk Dehner, founder of the Tom of Finland Archive in Los Angeles, but even there Orejudos worked from a photograph, according to Renslow. The painting stood above the landing of the stairs down to the lower level of the Gold Coast. It shows an exaggeratedly muscled leather man standing with his legs spread wide. “And he looks just like that,” Orejudos said with a broad grin. The picture was used as a promotional poster for the Gold Coast in 1978. That poster is in the current exhibition.

Like his friend Tom of Finland, Orejudos did booklets of erotic drawings telling a story. Some were generic homoerotic, others emphasized S/M and master/slave relationships, but most were laced with humor—for instance, a running narrative ironically bemoaning the plight of an obviously very willing slave with whom Orejudos clearly identified. In many of his drawings one of the participants thrusts a boot, sock or bare foot toward the viewer, unobtrusively indicating Orejudos’ own foot fetish.

Orejudos took his erotic artwork seriously, but had a healthy, even playful perspective on it. Longtime Gold Coast patron Lee Law recalled a conversation there with Orejudos and another man during which the other man went on at great length about what great art the Gold Coast paintings were. Orejudos finally broke in with, “That’s not art. They’re jack-off pictures.”

Orejudos told Chicago artist James Disrud that he once attended a high school reunion and when friends from that era asked what he did now, he explained that he was an artist. When they asked, as they inevitably did, what he painted, Orejudos mischievously said he just happened to have some examples with him and pulled out some of his erotic art to show them, leaving people at a loss for words.  

The power his art is likely to leave you at a loss for words as well.  The Leather Archives ad Museum in Chicago has the best collection and is well worth the visit.