Tom of Finland. The Complete Kake Comics

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In either case, there remains a large constituency who admire the work on a purely utilitarian basis; as described by Rob Meijer, owner of a leathershop and art gallery in Amsterdam, "These works are not conversation pieces, they're masturbation pieces." [ citation needed]

World's first homoerotic stamps produced in Finland". BBC News. 17 April 2014 . Retrieved 19 August 2015.

Disco Dining Club is a thematic food and drink event that revels in all the excess, debauchery and hedonism of disco. It is the belief of Disco Dining Club that there were moments of decadence throughout history that led to the ultimate decadence: disco. Whether a historical era, an artistic movement, or an iconic piece of culture, Disco Dining Club recreates these colorful moments through the lens of a theatrical dinner party. At Disco Dining Club, we ask but one thing of our guests: To consume everything. Millstein, Seth (15 April 2014). "Finland's Homoerotic Postage Stamps Are Pretty Bold". Bustle . Retrieved 19 August 2015. Hooven, F. Valentine III (2012). Tom of Finland: Life and Work of a Gay Hero. Berlin: Bruno Gmünder Verlag. ISBN 978-3-86787-166-2.

Tom of Finland: The Comic Collection. Vol. 1–5. Dian Hanson, ed. London: Taschen, 2005. ISBN 978-3-8228-3849-5

Highway Patrol, Greasy Rider, and Other Selected Works

Dehner, along with his partner S.R. Sharp, spoke with BuzzFeed News, about Tom's long legacy and the current exhibition of his photographs and reference material that is on view at Fotografiska in New York. 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". [29] World's first homoerotic stamps produced in Finland" (audio interview). Today programme. BBC News Online. 17 April 2014 . Retrieved 17 April 2014. When we curated the Nordic Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, we installed a whole wall with Tom of Finland drawings. Even at that time his art was considered controversial. It’s funny to think that only a few years later Tom of Finland’s drawings appeared on national stamps and on bedsheets and cushion covers from the traditional Finnish textile company Finlayson, founded in 1820. Cassils, Los Angeles-based performance artist 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.

Tom of Finland, what he modeled for us in his drawings, was actually a butch drag. We ended up adopting this — it was a way for us to do drag as a community. But G. B. Jones, with her drawings, all of a sudden made it part of our queer culture — we could think of ourselves as being women and leather dykes versus just doing drag. Simon Haas, of the Los Angeles-based artist duo the Haas Brothers But the artist’s work has had a long road to wider acceptance. From a young age, he took an interest in leather and uniforms — particularly those of local loggers and farmers — which would become his primary stylistic touchstone: Sailors flex and embrace in his work, and bikers touch bulges. This early attraction was amplified during a stint in the Finnish military, in which Laaksonen saw action in Finland’s 1941 Continuation War against the U.S.S.R., which landed his country on the wrong side of World War II history until it switched sides late in 1944, and later through the emergent biker subculture, inspired by Marlon Brando in the 1953 film “The Wild One.” (It should be noted that though the uniforms of the German military were an influence on the artist, Laaksonen was decidedly anti-racist.) Tom's drawings were not merely products of his imagination; part of their appeal lay in their intimate expressions, which were drawn from reference photos that Tom took of hundreds of men over the years.Prono, Luca: Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Popular Culture. p. 258. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008. ISBN 978-0-313-33599-0 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. [3] 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. [4] As a longtime Angeleno and definitely someone who has been a part of a larger queer leather community here, I know how important Tom of Finland was in terms of brotherhood. So even though it wasn’t necessarily for me, Tom’s house always provided an amazing community resource. But for me as a dyke, I could not find myself in Tom of Finland’s work beyond drag.