Tom of Finland: The Complete Kake Comics

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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. Laaksonen's life partner was the dancer Veli “Nipa” Mäkinen who shared his life for 28 years, until Mäkinen's death in 1981. 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. He did not submit his comics for publication until the 1960s; his first published comic The Tattooed Sailor was published in the August 1961 issue of Physique Pictorial, a magazine that was the first outlet to publish his illustrations in 1957. Throughout his body of work, Tom gave legendary form to an imaginative universe that helped fuel real-world liberation movements and enabled gay men to have agency over their sexuality in new ways.

Tom of Finland - 100 Years - Viewing Room - David Kordansky Tom of Finland - 100 Years - Viewing Room - David Kordansky

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). 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. Laaksonen developed a friendship with gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whose work depicting sado-masochism and fetish iconography was also subject to controversy. 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.Pulled from the Finnish mythology of lumberjacks representing strong masculinity, Laaksonen emphasized and privileged " homoerotic potentiality [. When I was the artist in residence there, it says Tom of Finland, so you would expect a bunch of German dudes in leather, but it was a pretty diverse group of people.

Tom of Finland Eight Artists on the Influence of Tom of Finland

Born Touko Valio Laaksonen in Kaarina, Finland in 1920, Tom of Finland first started creating comics as a young child and in the 1930s began recording his erotic fantasies on paper. Throughout most of Tom’s life, homosexuality was illegal in Finland and it was only in 1971 that the situation changed. He was definitely doing something that was going to get his ass killed, but he said, “This is my art. Tom had the fortitude of spirit to celebrate men at play at a time when most of the world considered gay people to be an abomination. 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.The publication of Kake transferred to Revolt Press in 1971, and to the Tom of Finland Company in 1982.

Tom of Finland. The Complete Kake Comics - New Mags Tom of Finland. The Complete Kake Comics - New Mags

As he confronted the stigmas and stereotypes that long burdened homosexual desire, his depictions of empowered gay men fully enjoying their sexuality proved liberating on social and aesthetic levels alike. By this time, however, Laaksonen was rendering private commissions, so more explicit work was produced but remained unpublished.Its like a portal to the queer culture I always aspired to but has mostly been erased these days by digital platforms and capitalism.

Books by Tom of Finland (Author of The Complete Kake Comics)

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.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.