Photo from Tom Of Finland Foundation
May 8, 1920 – Touko Laaksonen
The first time I saw a Tom Of Finland drawing was in a downtown Spokane used-book store near the bus station in the 1970s. The image, buried at the back of a men’s physique magazine (this is pre-Men’s Health Magazine, but the same idea) was a small ad for additional “special” publications. It jumped out at me like a great big erection. It depicted a pair of muscular butch men with big chins and broad grins grabbing each other’s bubble butts and straining packages while winking at me. I was startled. And aroused. Tom Of Finland’s pornographic drawings of booted, big butted beefcakes banging booty, rendered in charcoal, pencil, and ink, reminded me that I would need to get to a gym. Laaksonen:
“I almost never draw a completely naked man. He has to have at least a pair of boots or something on. To me, a fully dressed man is more erotic than a naked one. A naked man is, of course beautiful, but dress him in black leather or a uniform — ah, then he is more than beautiful, then he is sexy!”
Tom Of Finland was born as Touko Laaksonen. Tom Of Finland’s work is quite literally the masturbatory fantasies of a lonely young gay Finnish boy. He began drawing in his bedroom in the 1940s. A self-taught draftsman, Laaksonen’s earliest homoerotic drawings were inspired by his service in the Finnish armed forces. He worked as an illustrator in the Finnish advertising business until the early 1970s. He soon became a full time gay pornographer, selling the idea of the male body as a pleased, pleasuring and pleasured thing decades before Calvin Klein ads.
From “Tom Of Finland” and Tom Of Finland Foundation, via YouTube
Laaksonen’s most important achievement was in portraying gay guys as masculine, happy and proud at a time when they were supposed to be high-strung, shameful sissies. This is certainly the reason why decades of gay men have been Tom Of Finland fans. Today’s Internet gay porn is in debt to Tom Of Finland, with the endless loops of butch leather dudes with huge dicks and massive pecs having spontaneous, shameless sex, bent over a motorcycle or while standing-up in a dark alley. He gave gay men self-esteem and permission to feel like real men.
Laaksonen had a profound influence on LGBTQ and Leather culture because during an era that portrayed gay guys as fey, he portrayed them as bold, confident and forceful. Cocky and cocksure. Every drawing features a lumberjack, cop, construction worker, cowboy, biker, sailor or soldier; never a florist, choreographer or fashion designer. He turned it all around on the straight world; Laaksonen insisted that you couldn’t be genuinely butch unless you were gay.
Laaksonen’s big break came in the 1950s from Physique Pictorial, a sort of legal gay American publication pretending to be a straight bodybuilding magazine. It often featured Tom Of Finland’s manly men on the cover and inside pages. More than half a century later and 25 years after his passing, popular culture has turned around and now straight dudes who look like Tom Of Finland’s dirty drawings appear on the cover of mainstream magazines. I was once reading one with the porn sounding title Maxim while waiting to get my haircut at my local barbershop 7 Bucks A Whack (the perfect Tom Of Finland business name) and the thing was full of advice on how straight men can turn themselves into something out of Tom Of Finland.
Laaksonen:
“I know my little ‘dirty drawings’’are never going to hang in the main salons of the Louvre, but it would be nice if – I would like to say ‘when’, but I better say ‘if’ – our world learns to accept all the different ways of loving. Then maybe I could have a place in one of the smaller side rooms.”
Still the big question begs: is it art or is it porn? David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol were collectors of Tom Of Finland’s work. He continues to have gallery shows. His work is well hung in the permanent collections of many world museums, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
This may seem surprising given that homosexuality was illegal in Finland until 1971, and same-sex partnerships were sanctioned only in 2002; even today, Finland isn’t noted for tolerance; just last July, a Gay Pride march in Helsinki was disrupted by Nazis; yet, in spring 2014, Itella Posti published a set of first class Finnish stamps including two drawings by Tom Of Finland. The stamps were sanctioned by the Tom Of Finland Foundation headquartered in LA, which sells all kinds of cool Tom Of Finland shit, such as mugs, calendars, and tote bags. The set of stamps consists of a sheet of three self-adhesive stamps accompanied by a booklet The Secret Correspondence Of Tom Of Finland published by the Finnish Postal Museum. The stamp set became a hit with its popularity surprising the Finish Postal System which received hundreds of thousands of orders from 200 countries around the globe. I happily own a set, framed by my husband. I also have a six-volume boxed set of Tom Of Finland’s works.
A new book, Tom House (Rizzoli), features lots of photographs of Laaksonen historic home in Los Angeles, which was not only where the artist lived and worked over the last decade of his life, but also the center of the gay biker counterculture, as if the artist’s work came to life.
“My drawings are primarily meant for guys who may have experienced misunderstanding and oppression and feel that they have somehow failed in their lives. I want to encourage them. I want to encourage this minority group, to tell them not to give up, to think positively about their act and whole being.”
Tom Of Finland (2017), a biopic from director Dome Karukoski is streaming on Netflix, and no, it does not star James Franco, although I am surprised he didn’t get there first.
In 1991, Laaksonen was featured in the film documentary Daddy And The Muscle Academy: The Art, Life, And Times Of Tom Of Finland. Later that same year, he died in Helsinki, taken by Emphysema. He was 71-years-old.
He had quite the life. Not a bad legacy for a pornographer.
