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Three scratchboards, two 12'x 15", the other 16" x 12", depicting critical scenes from Jean Genet's classic Querelle. Two are uniform in size and are matted and framed in the style of the oblong one, which wads originally matted and framed by the artist. The life of Sam Steward (1909 - 1983), the subject of Justin Spring's biography "Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professsor; Tattoo Artist and Sexual Renegade "(Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2010), took Steward from a small town Ohio upbringing to personal friendships with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, associations with George Platt Lynes, Glenway Wescott and other literati, and a close relationship with sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. Steward's life may well be most provocatively known for his explicit diaries, journals, photography and art that both recorded his sexual life in detail (and which he shared with Kinsey). Starting out as an English professor at DePaul University with literary aspirations and after writing several commercially unsuccessful books, Steward attempted mid-life, in the early 1950s, to seek approval from Jean Genet to publish his own English translation-with his own original illustrations - of Querelle de Brest. When it became clear to Steward that Genet was disinterested, he dropped the project: these three scratchboards the art he he created for it. Steward's pursuit of "serious" literary expression ebbed, and later in the 1960s, under the pseudonym Phil Andros, he authored a series of gay paperback novels (STUD, The Greek Way, etc.), regarded as the most literate of homoerotic fiction, featuring his alter-ego hustler. He turned his artistic energies to tattooing, operating parlors catering to naval and military servicemen, in Chicago, Milwaukee and finally Oakland. And, his sexual activities increasingly involved sadomasochism, in which he had always been interested All three of these drawings were reproduced in "An Obscene Diary: The Visual World of Sam Steward" (Antonius Press/ Elysium Press 2010). During Steward's lifetime the "Lucky Strike" image was published in the Zurich-based Der Kries, an early homophile publication introduced to Steward by Dr. Kinsey and also in the rare anthology of homoerotic art published by Der Kries in 1960 Der Mann in der Zeichnung (under one of Steward's pseudonyms, Philip von Chicago). Spring writes: "Noteworthy among Steward's many illustrations for Der Kries is one that was originally created for Steward's 1951- 1952 English language translation of Querelle de Brest. Working form Polaroid photographs taken of himself in various poses, Steward fashioned three scratchboard illustrations for the story. In the first a man lights a cigarette for a sailor; in the second Querelle strangles the Armenian pederast; in the third Querelle is penetrated by the bartender husband of Madame Lysiane. The illustration of the sailor having his cigarette lit subsequently appeared in Der Kreis under the caption "Lucky Strike." Indeed, Steward etched "LUCKY STRIKE" in the cigarette in the picture on the verso, it is signed "Sam Steward 1951 1952". The strangulation picture has, in Steward's hand, on the verso: "From Genet's Querelle de Brest. Querelle strangles the Armenian". In the picture itself Steward etched his signature and date in the design on the Armenian's shirtcuff: "Sparrow Phil 1951". The picture of Querelle and the bartender in sexual union hung on the wall of Steward's apartment for many years. It is pictured in one of Steward's sex Polaroids reproduced in "Obscene Diary". On the verso of it, Steward wrote "L'Execution De Querelle 9-19-51" Steward did not work in scratchboard alone. His art was quite versatile: murals (in his apartments), tempera, watercolor, pastel, pen/ink and some wire sculpture and collage. These drawings could be regarded as the most important of his visual art. While they were motivated by literary aspiration, they, in effect, represented a real turning point in his lif.
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