Signed "ZACH," and dated "1979" in the margin, 17 x 11 inches on cream wove paper. Three original posters. The original edition size is unknown.
ZACH of Los Angeles and the Catacombs
In the decade following the Stonewall Riots, leather bars and sex clubs flourished in the South Market area of San Francisco from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. One of the most iconic venues of this time was the Catacombs, a members-only club that operated from 1975 until its closure in 1984. Initially a gay male fisting club, the Catacombs evolved into a space for lesbian S/M parties and mixed-gender events from 1978 onward. Admission was strictly regulated, requiring a recommendation from an existing member followed by a personal interview with the owner.
The club's founder, Steve McEachern, had established the Catacombs in the basement of his Victorian townhouse on 21st Street. In its early years, it quickly gained a reputation as San Francisco's premier venue for fisting aficionados. According to Gayle Rubin, the famed queer studies scholar, leather folk from all over the Western world made the pilgrimage to San Francisco to attend parties at the Catacombs”.(1) The front room of the club, Rubin further recalled, was host to an extraordinary collection of male erotic art [that] graced its walls” including works by the Los Angeles-based artist ZACH.(2).
The year 1981 sparked the beginning of the end for the Catacombs when its proprietor died of a sudden heart attack. Under Steve's lover Fred Heramb, the club reopened in 1982 on Shotwell Street just off San Francisco's famed Folsom strip. The revival effort was short-lived however. The emergence of the AIDS epidemic forced the closure of male bathhouses and sex clubs and the Catacombs followed suit and ceased to exist. Rubin writes: "The last Catacombs party was held on Saturday night, 21 April 1984. The discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV, but then called HTLV-3) was officially announced to the press on the following Monday morning”.(3)
ZACH produced regular erotic illustrations for Drummer, the leading publication of its time for the leather and S/M subcultures. He professionally exhibited at the Eons Gallery in Los Angeles alongside the likes of Tom Hinde, Tom of Finland, Go Mishima and other key players on the gay fetish art scene. Jack Fritscher, the editor-in-chief of Drummer at the time, was a friend of Steve McEachern a partner in the original 21st Street Catacombs. According to Fritscher, "much like Robert Opel's Fey-Wey Gallery in San Francisco and Lou Weingarden's Stompers in New York, Eons was one of the pioneering galleries for queer art in the 1970s”.(4) At present, little is known of the exact identity of the artist ZACH who presumably operated under a pseudonym. His commitment, however, to moulding a gay leather visual culture parallels his co-exhibitors at the Eons Gallery.
Many of ZACH's pieces from the late 1970s and early 1980s were collected by enthusiasts and reproduced as popular posters. Heramb purchased the original pencil drawing and used it to advertise the revived Catacombs at its second location on Shotwell Street. ZACH's posters for venues like the Swap Meet, a popular gay sex club in Los Angeles, further cemented his role in shaping the visual identity of the gay leather scene on the West Coast.
Vallot Auctioneers would like to thank Professor Gayle Rubin for her generous assistance in helping us prepare this catalogue entry about this iconic piece of queer ephemera and the accomplished yet lesser-known work of the artist ZACH.
1. Gayle Rubin, The Catacombs: A Temple of the Butthole”, Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), p. 226.
2. Rubin, p. 228.
3. Rubin, p. 239
4. Jack Fritscher, Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer: A Memoir of the Sex, Art, Salon, Pop Culture War, and Gay History of Drummer Magazine from the Titanic 1970s to 1999 (San Francisco: Palm Drive Publications, 2008), p. 315.
Condition
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