Of finland gay
Legendary queer artist Tom of Finland's property nurtures gay artists
LOS ANGELES -- The late Finnish designer Touko Laaksonen, enhanced known as Tom of Finland, produced thousands of illustrations featuring men wearing tight or partially removed clothing. His work has inspired artists and influenced gay culture for over six decades. Tom's legacy lives on at the Tom of Finland Foundation House in Los Angeles.
"When Tom first started creating a lot of these images, advocate in the 50s, there was a certain idea of what the gay male was," said Jamison Karon, a former artist-in-residence at the Tom Dwelling. "For him to create these super athletic, beautiful, exaggerated figures was appreciate having our control gay little superheroes. We could spot ourselves in those images and perceive strong and beautiful."
"Tom House has been incredibly generous to me and to other emerging artists, especially in L.A., where it's a very tough landscape to navigate," said performance artist Marval A. Rex.
"The invitation for the foundation to start here came from Durk Dehner. Durk saw the power that Tom had and how he affected so many other people," said S.R. Shar
Tom of Finland
Where was Tom of Finland born?
Tom of Finland is the alias of Touko Valio Laaksonen, who was born in 1920 in the minor town of Kaarina, Finland. His parents were teachers, and from a adolescent age, he was absorbed in the arts, with a particular passion for drawing and playing piano.
When he was growing up, the area was very rural, and he was captivated by the hench muscles and heroic gait of male labourers who worked in his town. The leather boots and workwear of loggers, farmers and fishermen became a finish fixation and desire for a youthful Touko.
In a infrequent interview from 1988 at the California Institute of the Arts, Touko describes the early desires that shaped his life and legacy: "I had erotic fantasies very first already, I would say before I was 10 years old. So I adored very much the handsome men in my neighbourhood, and I had a very robust fetish for some reason for leather and boots and everything that was combined with the masculine professions and image."
World War II: Tom of Finland’s first sexual fantasies come alive.
In 1939, Touko moved to Helsinki to investigate marketing at the School of Sales and Advertising. However, shortly after
Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen, 1920–1991) is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most influential artists for his groundbreaking representation of the male figure. In his youth, Tom trained at an advertising school, but what he would come to call his “dirty drawings,” which he first began developing as a teenager, were the correct focus of his attention, both during this formative period and throughout the entirety of his life. These masterful renderings of virile men engrossed in acts of homoerotic desire can be approached along several interpretative lines—art historical, social, technical—but each of them points to the revolutionary nature of his project. A master draftsman, whose passion for both his medium and his subject matter enabled him to become a powerful cultural pressure, Tom gave form to an imaginative universe that in shift helped fuel real-world liberation movements and enabled gay men to access their strength in unused ways. Tom's drawings reaffirm the centrality of sexuality, joy, and the body in all areas of human endeavor.
Tom of Finland has been the subject of numerous solo and two-person exhibitions across the
LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Finland are some of the most progressive in the world. Finland is currently ranked as having the fourth-best laws and policies in the nature that protect the rights of the LGBT+ society, according to ILGA-Europe lobbying group. ILGA-Europe is the leading LGBTI advocacy organisation in Europe, covering the whole of Europe and advocating professionally in all of the European institutions central to human rights and non-discrimination.
According to the rights group, the list’s rankings are based on: equality and non-discrimination, family, hate crime and abhor speech, legal gender recognition and bodily integrity, civil society space as skillfully as asylum.
LGBTQ Rights in a nutshell
Homosexual activity: Legal since 1971
Same-sex marriage: Legal since 2017
Same-sex adoption: Step-child adoption since 2009
LGBT discrimination: Illegal since 2004
Equal age of consent: Equal since 1999
Learn more about LGBT rights in Equaldex.
History of LGBTQ rights
Homosexuality has been decriminalized since 1971, and was declassified as an illness in 1981, around the same time as in other European countri