Tom of Finland

Touko Laaksonen, best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist notable for his stylized androerotic and fetish art. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade.

Over the course of four decades he produced some 3500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits: heavily muscled torsos, limbs, buttocks, and large penises. Tight or partially removed clothing showed off these traits, with the penis often visible as a bulge in tight trousers or prominently displayed for the viewer. His drawings frequently feature two or more men either immediately preceding or during explicit sexual activity.

His career began in 1956 when Laaksonen submitted drawings to the influential American magazine Physique Pictorial who later premiered them in the Spring of 1957. The editor of the magazine credited them to Tom of Finland.

Post World War II saw the rise of the biker culture as rejecting "the organization and normalization of life after the war, with its conformist, settled lifestyle." Laaksonen was heavily influenced by images of bikers as well as artwork of George Quaintance and Etienne, among others, that he cited as his precursors. His drawings of bikers and leathermen capitalized on the leather and denim outfits which differentiated those men from mainstream culture and suggested they were untamed, physical, and self-empowered. This is contrasted with the mainstream, medical and psychological sad and sensitive young gay man who is passive.

Laaksonen's drawings of this time "can be seen as consolidating an array of factors, styles and discourses already existing in the 1950s gay subcultures," which may have led to them being widely distributed and popularized in gay culture.

Laaksonen's work had predominantly been segmented to private collectors and collections seen only by consumers who sought out the underground gay pornography industry. With the decriminalization of male nudity, gay pornography became more mainstream in gay cultures. Laaksonen's drawings also came to the attention of mainstream gay communities, and by 1973, he was both publishing erotic comic books and making inroads to the mainstream art world with exhibitions.

By the mid-1970's he was also emphasizing a photorealism style making aspects of the drawings appear more photographic. Many of his drawings are based on photographs, but none are exact reproductions of them. The photographic inspiration is used to create lifelike, almost moving images with convincing and active postures and gestures, while Laaksonen exaggerates physical features and presents his ideal of masculine beauty and sexual allure, combining realism with fantasy.

In the late 1970s, clothes designer Vivienne Westwood appropriated Laaksonen's art for t-shirts which were featured at SEX, the store run by Westwood and partner Malcolm McLaren. The t-shirts were modeled by Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, and became an iconic part of punk history in the process.

In 1979, Laaksonen with businessman and friend Durk Dehner co-founded the Tom of Finland Company, which became the Tom of Finland Foundation dedicated to collecting, preserving, and exhibiting homoerotic artwork. The scope of the organization eventually expanded to erotic works of all types; sponsored contests, exhibits and started the groundwork for a museum of erotic art.

In the late 1990s, the company introduced a fashion line based on his works, which covers a wide array of looks besides the typified cutoff-jeans-and-jacket style of his drawings. The fashion line balances the original homoeroticism of the drawings with mainstream fashion culture, and their runway shows occur in many of the venues during the same times as other fashion companies.

Today you can purchase his book, Tom of Finland XXL,which contains over one thousand images covering six decades of the artists career. The work was gathered from collections across the US and Europe with the help of the Tom of Finland Foundation, and features many drawings, paintings and sketches never previously reproduced. Other images have only been seen out of context and are presented here in the sequential order Laaksonen intended for full artistic appreciation and erotic impact. This elegant oversized volume showcases the full range of Laaksonen's talent, from sensitive portraits to frank sexual pleasure to tender expressions of love and haunting tributes to young men struck down by AIDS.

Completing this collector's edition of the book are eight specially commissioned essays on Laaksonen's social and personal impact by Camille Paglia, John Waters, Armistead Maupin, Todd Oldham, and others, plus a scholarly analysis of individual drawings by art historian Edward Lucie-Smith.