Almost, But Not Quite Touching

Fig. 1: Detail from Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam (1508-12)

Fig. 2: Detail from Jim French's Longhorns - Dance (1969)    

 

 

I. 

 

The phrase almost, but not quite touching invariably evokes Michelangelo's iconic fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, where the index fingers of God and Adam reach toward each other without quite making contact. It's an image that theologians and art critics have discussed for centuries. 

 

Many argue that it illustrates how, following the anticipated Fall of Man, there will be a spiritual rift between humanity and God the Father. Others, however, suggest that if Adam but stretch his finger he can still connect with his Creator - the choice is his (even if perfection remains unattainable).       

 

I suppose it might also be said that the space between fingers - across which many viewers imagine a divine spark leaping - serves to remind us that there are things beyond our grasp, suspended between the tangible and intangible, absence and presence.

 

 

II. 

 

The phrase almost, but not quite touching also makes me think, however, of another artwork: - one that is not so widely known or replicated, even though it rather beautifully symbolises ideas of anticipation and yearning ... 

 

The picture in question is a homoerotic illustration produced in charcoal and ink by the American artist Jim French in 1969, working under the pseudonym Rip Colt [1]. It depicts two cowboys "facing each other in side profile [...] one wearing a denim jacket, the other a leather waistcoat" [2], but naked from the waist down except for their boots and gun belts. 

 

The cowboy on the right is shown rather tenderly adjusting the other's neckerchief. It's not this detail, however, which initially catches one's eye. Rather, it's the fact that their "semi-flaccid penises, prominently on display, are close to touching" [3]. 

 

First released as part of a six-print series, the image was then reproduced in The Colt Album (1973) and issue #7 of the magazine Manpower! (1974). It gained much wider notoriety, however, when Malcolm McLaren and his partner Vivienne Westwood appropriated the design for their 'Cowboys' T-shirt - as sold in their King's Road boutique and as worn by members of the Sex Pistols [4]. 

 

 

III. 

 

While separated by centuries and vastly different cultural contexts, both images discussed here ultimately derive their power from the exact same spatial politics. 

 

Thus, whether it is the distance between the fingers of Man and God, or the erotically charged gap between two sets of male genitalia, the magic lies entirely in the fact that they are almost, but not quite touching. 

 

Reconciliation and fulfilment are withheld, and the viewer in each case is left suspended in that exquisite, agonising space of pure anticipation. 

 

It seems that in the world of art as in the world of sex, edging is a key concept used to prolong an experience and keep everyone aroused (though I believe those in the art world prefer to speak of liminality).   

  

Notes

 

[1] As well as his artwork, Jim French (1932 - 2017) is famous for establishing Colt Studio - an independent gay porn business - with his business partner Lou Thomas in 1967. His legacy of homoerotic images, spread across a wide spectrum of formats and media, is one that has shaped the cultural perception of the male body and his artwork and photography has been hailed as iconic and seminal (no pun intended). 

      If you like hypermasculine nudes - construction workers, cowboys, sailors, bikers in leather, etc. - then French is the artist for you (just as Village People will probably be your disco group of choice). 

  

[2] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 265. 

 

[3] Ibid. 

 

[4] The only addition made by McLaren and Westwood to the original image was some imaginary dialogue between the two figures. French was not particularly pleased by his illustration becoming one of the key visual provocations of the punk movement without his agreement and without his being financialy compensated. 

      For more information, see the post 'Double Exposure' (19 Jan 2025) in which I discuss this T-shirt and image (in relation to a painting by D. H. Lawrence). 

 

 

Double Exposure (A Tale of Two Pictures)

D. H. Lawrence Boccaccio Story (1926) 

McLaren and Westwood Two Cowboys (1975)

 

Oh what a pity, oh! don't you agree 

that figs aren't found in the land of the free! [1]

 

I. 

 

If, like me, you are keen to promote the idea of D. H. Lawrence as a Sex Pistol, then one of the aspects of his work that you might discuss in order to lend credence to such a thesis is his painting ...

 

Take, for example, the humorous canvas Boccaccio Story (1926), which depicts the handsome young peasant Masetto [2] asleep - or possibly feigning sleep - beneath a large almond tree on a hot afternoon with his clothes in a state of dramatic disarray, exposing his lower body to the view of some passing nuns who, it might be noted, stare intently at his genitalia, rather than averting their eyes in embarrassment as one might have expected. 

 

It was clearly intended to amuse - but also to provoke. For as Lawrence confided to a friend at the time, he deliberately inserted a phallus in each one of his pictures somewhere: "And I paint no picture that won't shock people's castrated social spirituality." [3] 

 

This is very much what we might now characretise as a punk attitude and it's not surprising that Boccaccio Story - along with a dozen other pictures - was seized by the police after being exhibited at the Warren Gallery in London in the summer of 1929 [4].  

 

 

II. 

Forty-six years later, another police raid took place at a small boutique called Sex on the King's Road, Chelsea, owned by Malcolm McLaren and his partner Vivienne Westwood ...

 

This time, it wasn't an oil on canvas that the virgin pure policemen came to grab, but T-shirts featuring a print of two semi-naked cowboys "facing each other in side profile [...] one wearing a denim jacket, the other a leather waistcoat" [5]. 

 

The cowboy on the right is shown rather tenderly adjusting the other's neckerchief. It's not this detail, however, which initially catches one's eye. Rather, it's the fact that their "semi-flaccid penises, prominently on display, are close to touching" [6]. 

 

For McLaren, this image - appropriated from the world of gay male erotica - not only possessed the capacity to shock and outrage public opinion, the cowboys also encapsulated the frustration and boredom he was feeling at this time: "'It was as though they were waiting for something to happen, just like everyone I knew in London.'" [7]

 

The shirt went on sale at Sex in the summer of 1975 and Alan Jones - who worked at the shop - was perhaps the first to buy it; he was certainly the person who became best associated with the shirt after being taken into custody by two burly policemen for wearing it whilst walking round Soho and charged with 'displaying an obscene print in a public space'. 

 

He was then released, but ordered to appear at Vine Street Magistrates' Court a few weeks later.  Naturally, the case attracted attention from the press. It also resulted, as mentioned, in a police raid on 430 King's Road: 

 

"The remaining stock  of eighteen Cowboys T-shirts were seized, and McLaren and Westwood's arrest on indecency charges escalated the affair into a free-speech cause célèbre when Labour MP Colin Phipps called on Home Secretary Roy Jenkins to review the outmoded law." [8]   

 

Despite mounting a spirited defence - one that called upon expert witnesses to attest to the artistic merit of the shirt design - Jones, McLaren, and Westwood were all found guilty and handed down fairly large fines [9].

 

 

III. 

 

McLaren may have hoped that this (somewhat farcical) case "would continue the process of 'decensorship' of British life that had begun with the 1960 victory to publish D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover" [10], but, it never quite became the national scandal that he wished for. 

 

It did, however, increase sales at Sex. 

 

And today, five decades later, a Cowboys T-shirt can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art - click here - or bought at auction at Bonham's for a substantial sum of money; including this one originally owned and worn by Sid Vicious and autographed on the back by Johnny Rotten (a snip at £17,850). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Innocent England', Nettles (Faber & Faber, 1930).  

[2] Masetto is a character in Boccaccio's Decameron, a collection of short stories by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). 

      Its overtly sexual and anti-clerical elements did not go down well with the Church, but the work, first translated into English in 1620, has remained hugely popular and influential. It is available online as a Project Gutenberg e-book: click here. The story of Masetto and the nuns is the first tale told on the third day.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence letter to Earl Brewster (27 Feb 1927) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 648. 

 

[4] What is surprising, however, as I indicated in an earlier post discussing Lawrence's Boccaccio Story - click here - is that Lawrence scholars, including Keith Sagar, should wish to play down the scandalous aspect of his paintings. 

      It is surprising also that Lawrence should react with such (seemingly genuine) distress when thirteen of his pictures were removed by the police from the Warren Street Gallery, branded as obscene, and threatened with destruction by the authorities (they were saved from the flames and returned to Lawrence only after it was agreed with the judge at Bow Street Magistrates court that the paintings would never be exhibited in England again).   

 

[5] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 265. 

      As Gorman informs readers, the image of the two cowboys was originally produced as a charcoal and ink drawing by the American artist Jim French, in 1969. McLaren had come across the picture reproduced in the magazine Manpower! that he had purchased at a bookshop located in New York's gay quarter in the spring of 1975.  

[6] Ibid. 

[7] Malcolm McLaren quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 266. 

      This explains the addition of the text McLaren added beneath the figures to the effect that there's nowhere to go and nothing to do; that everything was played out.

     

[8] Ibid., p. 269. 

  

[9] Gorman reminds us that, according to Alan Jones, "McLaren and Westwood reneged on their offer to reimburse him for his own £30 fine". See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 271.

 

[10] Ibid., p. 270.

 

 

For related posts to this one, click here, here, and here.