Tom of Finland

Laaksonen was born on 8 May 1920 and raised by a middle-class family in Kaarina, a town in southwestern Finland, near the city of Turku. Both of his parents Suoma and Edwin Laaksonen were schoolteachers at the grammar school that served Kaarina. The family lived in the school building's attached living quarters. He went to school in Turku and in 1939, at the age of 19, he moved to Helsinki to study advertising. In his spare time he also started drawing erotic images for his own pleasure, Finland became embroiled in the Winter War with the Soviet Union, and then became formally involved in World War II, and he was conscripted in February 1940 into the Finnish Army. He later attributed his fetishistic interest in uniformed men to encounters with men in army uniform, especially soldiers of the German Wehrmacht serving in Finland at that time. He said, "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!" After the war, in 1945, he returned to studies. Laaksonen's artwork of this period compared to later works is considered more romantic and softer with "gentle-featured shapes and forms". The men featured were middle-class, as opposed to the sailors, bikers, lumberjacks, construction workers, and other members of stereotypically hypermasculine working class groups that feature in his later work. Another key difference is the lack of dramatic compositions, self-assertive poses, muscular bodies, and "detached exotic settings" that his later work embodied. ==Career==

.In 1956 Laaksonen submitted drawings to the American magazine Physique Pictorial, which premiered the images in the 1957 Spring issue under the pseudonym Tom, as it resembled his given name Touko. In the Winter issue later that year, editor Bob Mizer coined the credit Tom of Finland''. One of his pieces was featured on the Spring 1957 cover, depicting two log drivers at work with a third man watching them. Biker subculture was both marginal and oppositional, and provided postwar gay men with a stylised masculinity that included rebelliousness and danger. Laaksonen was influenced by images of bikers as well as artwork of George Quaintance and Etienne, among others, that he cited as his precursors, "disseminated to gay readership through homoerotic physique magazines" starting in 1950. This contrasted with the mainstream, medically and psychologically 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 within those cultures. He worked at an advertising agency in the 1960s. Their primary market was gay men, but because of the conservative and homophobic social culture of the era, gay pornography was illegal and the publications were typically presented as dedicated to physical fitness and health. In the 1962 case of MANual Enterprises v. Day the United States Supreme Court ruled that nude male photographs were not inherently obscene. Softcore gay pornography magazines and films featuring fully nude models, some of them tumescent, quickly appeared and the pretense of being about exercise and fitness was dropped as controls on pornography were reduced. By the end of the 1960s the market for beefcake magazines collapsed.''. The caption notes that reproductions of the complete "natural (nude) Tom drawings" are for sale by mail order. Gay mainstream appeal (1970s–1991) 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. By the mid-1970s he was also emphasizing a photorealistic style, making aspects of the drawings appear more photographic. The photographic inspiration is used, on the one hand, 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 1979, Laaksonen, with businessman and friend Durk Dehner, co-founded the Tom of Finland Company to preserve the copyright on his art, which had been widely pirated. Tom was introduced to Dehner by his pen pal and fellow erotic artist Dom Orejudos. Also in 1979, Laaksonen and Lou Thomas (a co-founder of Colt Studio) published Target by Tom; The Natural Man, a series of photographs and drawings of adult performers including Bruno, Jeremy Brent, Chuck Gatlin, and Steve Sartori. In 1984 the Tom of Finland Foundation was established to collect, preserve and exhibit androerotic art. Although Laaksonen was quite successful at this point, with his biography on the best-seller list, and Benedikt Taschen, the world's largest art book publisher, reprinting and expanding a monograph of his works, he was most proud of the Foundation. Schmeling cited Laaksonen as having considerably influenced his artistic style. ==Personal life==

Laaksonen's romantic partner was the dancer Veli "Nipa" Mäkinen, with whom he shared his life for 28 years, until Mäkinen's death in 1981. Laaksonen was diagnosed with emphysema in 1988. Eventually the disease and medication caused his hands to tremble, leading him to switch media from pencil to pastel. He died in 1991 of an emphysema-induced stroke. ==Reception==

When examining the reception of Laaksonen's art, it is impossible to separate it from its original purpose. His "dirty drawings", as he himself called them, served primarily as gay erotica, intended to arouse the viewer. As described by Rob Meijer, owner of a leathershop and art gallery in Amsterdam, "These works are not conversation pieces, they're masturbation pieces." Many of his drawings were published in publications like Physique Pictorial, or were part of advertisements, decorations, and murals for male bath houses, leather bars and clubs—namely, for erotically charged or explicitly sexual spaces. Laaksonen's drawings were particularly popular in the flourishing leather subculture of the 1950s to 1970s. Tom's drawings were central to the development and dissemination of a more unified gay leather aesthetic, resulting in the so-called "clone look" of the 1970s and 1980s. 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. A controversial theme in his drawings was the erotic treatment of men in Nazi uniforms. They form a small part of his overall work, but the typically flattering visual treatment of these characters has led some viewers to infer sympathy or affinity for Nazism, and they have been omitted from most recent anthologies of his work. Later in his career Laaksonen disavowed this work and was at pains to dissociate himself and his work from fascist or racist ideologies. He also depicted a significant number of black men in his drawings. Sheila Jeffreys offers a radical feminist critique of Laaksonen's work in her 2003 book Unpacking Queer Politics. Art critics have mixed views about Laaksonen's work. His detailed drawing technique has led to him being described as a "master with a pencil", while in contrast a reviewer for Dutch newspaper Het Parool described his work as "illustrative but without expressivity". Writing for Artforum, Kevin Killian said that seeing Tom of Finland originals "produces a strong respect for his nimble, witty creation". ==Cultural impact==

In 2006, historian Jack Fritscher wrote:If there is a gay Mount Rushmore of four great pioneer pop artists, the faces would be Chuck Arnett, Etienne, A. Jay, and Tom of Finland.Laaksonen's artwork inspired numerous other artists to explore explicit sexuality in their own art, and some (like MATT) dedicated works of art in his memory. In 2019, the Los Angeles Times reported:Tom’s cocksure leather look—a breakout sultry aesthetic dating to the 1950s—captured the early attention of artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Raymond Pettibon and Mike Kelley. It also influenced fashion and music: designers Jean-Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler and Queen’s Freddie Mercury. Today, Finland embraces its artist-son as a national hero, one backed by plenty of online merch—as diverse as sex toys and holiday ornaments. Tom’s bevy of built rogues, always affable and forever awash in unapologetic lust, has indeed aged well. == Institutional and artistic legacy ==

Tom of Finland Company Laaksonen and Dehner established the Tom of Finland Company in 1978 to oversee the publication of Laaksonen's work and to combat copyright infringement. and Rex. ToFF derives some income from its public programming and by licensing Laaksonen's images and name for commercial use, but it depends on donations and membership dues. a home in Echo Park, Los Angeles owned by Dehner at which Laaksonen lived for about a decade in his final years and where he created about 800 artworks (20% of his body of work). A Facilities Task Force is leading this effort. == Art collections and exhibitions ==

In 2009, Laaksonen was inducted into the Leather Hall of Fame. Some of his original works are at the Leather Archives & Museum in Chicago. New York's Museum of Modern Art has acquired several examples of Laaksonen's artwork for its permanent collection. 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." 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. In 1999, an exhibition took place at the Institut Culturel Finlandais (Finnish Cultural Centre) in Paris. In 2011 there was a large retrospective exhibition of Laaksonen's artwork in Turku, Finland. The exhibition was one of the official events in Turku's European Capital of Culture programme. In 2012, Kulturhuset presented a retrospective, Tom of Finland, in Stockholm, Sweden; and Tom of Finland's work was in the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation's We the People in New York City, USA. In 2013, MOCA presented Bob Mizer & Tom of Finland in Los Angeles, USA. The artist's work was also seen in HAPPY BIRTHDAY Galerie Perrotin – 25 years in Lille, France; Leslie Lohman Museum's Rare and Raw in New York City, USA; and the Institute of Contemporary Art's Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper) in London, England. In 2015, Artists Space presented the exhibition "Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play" in New York City, USA. The exhibition was also presented in Kunsthalle Helsinki in 2016, complemented with additional material such as photos from family albums. In 2020, as part of the 100th birthday celebrations, "Tom of Finland: Love and Liberation" at London's House of Illustration showed 40 originals with ephemera emphasizing fashion as an aspect of his work. == Film ==

In 1991, Filmitakomo and Yleisradio produced a documentary film, Daddy and the Muscle Academy, and was shown at film festivals and film art houses worldwide. While praising the artwork's quality, one critic noted the problems inherent in the film's lauding of Laaksonen as a gay pride icon while ignoring his work's "resemblance to both S & M pornography and Fascist art", which she tied to Laaksonen's early sexual experiences with German soldiers during World War II. Variety announced in 2013 that Finnish director Dome Karukoski was set to make a biopic of Laaksonen, entitled Tom of Finland. Helsinki-filmi produced it and secured exclusive rights. The film, released in February 2017 in Finland, is the first biopic of the artist. == Postage stamps ==

In September 2014 the Finnish postal service, Itella Posti, published a set of three first class stamps featuring drawings by Laaksonen and in association with the stamps' release exhibited some of his correspondence at the Finnish Postal Museum. Two of the stamps include portions of an illustration of a nude man sitting between the legs of another man dressed as a police officer; the other depicts nude buttocks with a man's face included between the thighs. The stamp set exceeded Posti's expectations, with pre-orders from 178 countries, making it the best-selling stamp set in the service's history. ==See also==

• Ilppo Pohjola (author): Kari Paljakka and Alvaro Pardo (producers): Daddy and the Muscle Academy: Tom of Finland. Filmitakomo & YLE, Finland 1991. (Duration of Feature: 58 Minutes. Also features frames of Laaksonen's graphic art.) ==External links==