Tom of Finland: The Complete Kake Comics

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Tom of Finland: The Art of Pleasure. Mischa Ramakers, ed. London: Taschen, 1998, ISBN 3-8228-8598-3 Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen, Finnish; b. May 8, 1920, d. November 7, 1991) has long been recognized as one of the twentieth century’s great visual innovators. A masterful draftsman, Tom produced an expressive body of work that depicts masculine, empowered gay men fully enjoying their sexuality, engulfed in intimate moments of unabashed joy and pleasure. This exhibition showcases the artist’s diverse material approaches to his meticulous figurations—including sharp pen and marker linework, ink washes, and delicate pencil shading—that exemplify the boldness of his vision and the virtuoso qualities of his hand. With their skillful observation of light and classical composition, and their images of muscular men engaged in complex motions, the drawings reveal formal concerns that call to mind the work of Caravaggio and Rembrandt. The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts, Claude J. Summers, Cleis Press, 2004. ISBN 1-57344-191-0 Tom of Finland: The Comic Collection. Vol. 1–5. Dian Hanson, ed. London: Taschen, 2005. ISBN 978-3-8228-3849-5

Tom of Finland - Artist - David Kordansky Gallery Tom of Finland - Artist - David Kordansky Gallery

In my drawings I have no political statements to make, no ideology. I am thinking only about the picture itself. The whole Nazi philosophy, the racism and all that, is hateful to me, but of course I drew them anyway—they had the sexiest uniforms!Over the course offive decades, Tom’s work reflected societal changes as they appeared in fashion,technology, architecture, and commercial design (he began his career as an advertising illustrator).Because of the concentrated and consistent nature of his project, the peripheral variations that creep in become telling indicators of the ways in which the world was changing over the decades. For all of his many influential qualities, Tom was above all responsive: to his own desires, to the relationships and bodies he observed, and to his materials. Hooven III, Valentine, Tom of Finland: The Official Life and Work of a Gay Hero. New York: Abrams, 2020, p.224. Tom of Finland’s influence is so vast that it can be hard to calculate. Through sheer force of imagination, the artist was able to manifest a hyper-real, hypermasculine style of queer erotic illustration that would end up inspiring not just legions of visual artists but entire subcultures. Any time a stylist puts a young pop star in a leather biker cap for a magazine shoot, the impact of Tom of Finland is not far-off.

Tom of Finland - Wikipedia Tom of Finland - Wikipedia

Keep Your Timber Limber at the ICA pulls together boundary-pushing drawings by eight artists that challenge gender, sexual and political stereotypes and highlight issues of war and censorship. During his lifetime and beyond, Laaksonen's work has drawn both admiration and disdain from different quarters of the artistic community. Laaksonen developed a friendship with gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whose work depicting sado-masochism and fetish iconography was also subject to controversy. [ citation needed] Karukoski's English-Language Debut Will Be Tom of Finland's First Authorized Biopic". Elsa Keslassy. Variety 13 September 2013 Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinized homoerotic art, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. [2] Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.Tom of Finland to appear on stamps in September". Itella Posti. 13 April 2014. Archived from the original on 15 April 2014 . Retrieved 17 April 2014. With the decriminalization of male nudity, gay pornography became more mainstream in gay cultures, and Laaksonen's work along with it. By 1973, he was publishing erotic comic books and making inroads to the mainstream art world with exhibitions. In 1973 he gave up his full-time job at the Helsinki office of advertising agency McCann. "Since then I've lived in jeans and lived on my drawings," is how he described the lifestyle transition which occurred during this period. Prono, Luca: Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Popular Culture. p. 258. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008. ISBN 978-0-313-33599-0 New York's Museum of Modern Art has acquired several examples of Laaksonen's artwork for its permanent collection. [35] In 2006, MoMA in New York accepted five Tom of Finland drawings as part of a much larger gift from The Judith Rothschild Foundation. The trustee of The Judith Rothschild Foundation, Harvey S. Shipley Miller, said, "Tom of Finland is one of the five most influential artists of the twentieth century. As an artist he was superb, as an influence he was transcendent." [36] Hudson, of Feature Inc., New York, placed Tom of Finland's work in the collections of Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art and Art Institute of Chicago. His work is also in the public Collections of: The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, USA; Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art; Turku, Finland; University of California Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley (California), USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA; Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA; and Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, USA. a b c d e Beefcake (1999); Thom Fitzgerald, writer, director, co-producer; Shandi Mitchell, co-producer; Alliance Independent Films.