Tom of Finland was a Finnish artist widely known for his homoerotic artwork. His drawings of gay hypermasculinity and sexuality created a community for fetish culture. LGBTQ+ fashion, entertainment, and pop culture channel his creative vision across various platforms.
However, who Tom of Finland was, and how he came to be, remains a mystery for many. Let’s journey back to discover the man behind the bulging pen strokes. His artistic influence lives on in modern celebrations of sex between men.
Who was Tom of Finland?
Tom of Finland was born Touko Laaksonen on May 8, 1920 in a small village on the southwest coast of Finland. He was known by the name “Tom” among all – family, friends, lovers, and fans. This was also the name he used to sign his secret gay drawings to protect his identity.
Throughout his lifetime, Tom fixated on the sculpted contours of muscular bodies, especially the ones accentuated by tight uniforms and the creases of well-endowed bulges. In addition, he found the rugged sensuality of leather, mustaches, and masculine strength alluring.
Growing up in the countryside exposed the artist to the ruggedness of farmers and loggers. After serving in an anti-aircraft unit in Helsinki, he went on to study advertising at university. During his time in the military, he found himself drawn to the raw, sweaty masculinity of construction workers, sailors, and police officers at the city ports.
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10 sexy men for Tom of Finland’s 102nd birthday
Tom of Finland not only pushed the boundaries of homoerotic art and censorship in the 1950s and 60s, but his images became intertwined with gay culture and the gay aesthetic of the 1970s until present day.
As a lieutenant, he finally got to act on his insatiable libido with fellow (and invading) soldiers patrolling the Eastern Front during World War II. The temporary blackouts of the streets transpired as the dark concrete cruising grounds of his fantasies.
These themes permeated Tom of Finland’s art and served as the unashamed foundation of his future legacy. It all began with Tom’s “dirty drawings,” which he created privately while working as a commercial artist, unsuspecting that they would one day resonate with gay men worldwide.
His iconic artwork and drawing style
The art world dismissed Tom of Finland as a raunchy illustrator as they were more preoccupied with fruit bowls than erect leader-clad musclemen. He wasn’t afraid to put his gay desire on paper and sketched the men of his fantasies, inspired by his own encounters. Then he made them drunk with testosterone.
During the 1970s, after the decriminalization of nude male art, Tom held exhibitions across major queer cities and became a celebrated figure in the gay community. It wasn’t until the late stages of his career that the beau monde began to recognize his revolutionary vision for masculine sexuality.
Like most of the greats, Tom reached the peak of his fame and acclaim when his soul entered the eternal leather bar that is heaven.
Tom’s most famous artwork is essentially a commemoration of everything that turned him on: from the sharp angles of combat boots and military caps to the sexual clash of working-class and authoritative figures.
Not to mention he depicted the male anatomy with a very optimistic view.
Tom’s artistic vision was said to embrace the ideology of a man “who was always just as willing to get his hole plowed as he was to do the plowing.” The rarest but most joyous of gay breeds: a power verse.
Gay horny subject matter aside, Tom was a masterful draftsman. He took pen and paper to the heights Michelangelo achieved with sculpting. And both artists honed on the glory of the muscular male body, if not the glorification.
Tom of Finland’s influence on LGBTQ+ culture
In the face of rampant homophobia, Tom of Finland blazed a trail for gay men to reclaim their identity. He turned hetero stereotypes – hypermasculine ideals weaponized against gayness – into a cock-loving frenzy.
His renderings of leather-clad and uniformed muscle men in various states of undress or a homoerotic context became a symbol of the emerging gay leather subculture in the 20th century.
Today, you can’t enter a fetish gay bar anywhere without seeing Tom’s cultural fingerprints. His mission to showcase sex between men as just that – manly – enabled future generations to embrace the manliness of their boners.
Beyond lust, he empowered camaraderie and pride among gay men. He inspired them to create public spaces to find community – and cruising.
The gay leathermen and fetish community that continues to exist, albeit facilitated by online culture, owe part of their liberation to Tom’s willingness to face the condemnation of taking those desires out of the cage.
Tom of Finland was the Andy Warhol of gay sex; queer artists worldwide still pay tribute to the homoerotic legend.
“Peter Berlin, Kenneth Anger, Joe Dallesandro, Jeff Stryker, Jim Morrison, James Bidgood, John Rechy, even Elvis and James Dean. None of them could have existed without Tom Of Finland’s art coming first,” filmmaker John Waters told the New York Times.
The Tom of Finland Foundation continues to celebrate the artist
Tom of Finland is famous and will always be celebrated because he turned gay sex into an artistic genre.
The Tom of Finland Foundation was established in 1984, seven years before the artist’s passing. The foundation looks to preserve, protect, and celebrate his legacy as the master of homoerotic art and his vast collection of works. It continues to live up to its mission.
In 2014, the Finnish postal service released three postage stamps based on one of Tom’s most famous drawings. A “nipple, shapely buttocks, and a muscular, mustachioed man smoking a cigarette” cemented him as one of the most impactful artists who ever lived.
In 2017, award-winning filmmaker Dome Karukoski brought Tom of Finland to the big screen. The 90th Academy Awards selected the film as the Finnish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film.
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The entertainment industry touts the artist, who is spotted in high-profile collaborations like Nicopanda and Hood By Air. However, what sticks the most is the remembrance of the gay community, who embrace his equal energy and lust.
The country of Finland even memorializes him with a custom emoji that they published among a set of 55 other iconic Finnish items.
Tom walked so gay men could run
A century ago, and even in some places today, polite society relegated out gay men to its shadows. Tom of Finland proclaimed gay pleasure a muse worthy of artistic capture and idolization.
He didn’t just validate our sexual existence – he made it aspirational.
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Celtic
I have been a huge fan of Tom for forty years. As a friend of the Foundation, I have known Durk for around twenty years. Tom’s art is hypersexualized homoeroticism. It is deliciously stimulating at multiple levels of emotion and sensation. Today the Foundation sponsors a large population of artists. In this time of LGBTQ+ culture, we must support and nurture those artists, vigorously. The gay hate machine has become super-energized over the last several years. We MUST push back.
Pietro D
Agree that Tom of Finland is iconic and historically of great importance, and yes, we need to support and foster the rights we have as gay men with meaning and dignity………. and, yes. we do have to push back but not with “hate”. That would make us as bad or evil as the ultra right wing that would destroy all we have achieved. I’m not American, never have lived in America except for my annual, professorial exchanges to the U.S., but I certainly know all too well that what you have in America today is hardly any kind of ideal society. America is racked with so many gargantuan problems, I’m actually surprised that matters have not led to a complete show-down. You have had one Civil War. Your innumerable divisions are destroying what was once a very great country.
abfab
And that’s where Tom Of FInland comes in. We’re well aware of our situations here. Look at those amazingly beautiful men and thank the wonderful country of Finland for gifting us this sexy artist.
Civil War? Oy vay.
FreddieW
I have almost as much Tom of Finland in my bookcase as the many ways Taschen has figured to repackage and market it. But sort of disappointed to read that abfab also appreciates it.
Fahd
No one ever drew a sexier blond.
Kangol2
This is a great piece on Tom of Finland. It’s telling, though, that not a single one of the images you feature shows his beautiful images of Black men. He was more expansive in his imagination and depictions of sexual desire and the diversity of the world around him than many people out there, and was ahead of the curve, including Jamie Valentino’s, it seems.
abfab
Kangol2……. a man after my own heart……..which is going thru palpataions as I send you this link. OMFG, as a kid these drawings were all I needed. Black Hunks Rule. Pure BeefCake.
www. ……………….tomoffinland.org/black-men-in-toms-world/…………………you’ll find it.
Den
It might have been a bit better if the author(s) of this article were a little better versed in art history than they are. Paul Cadmus, Edouard Manet, Thomas Eakins, Charles Demuth, and many more produced images of explicit homoerotic sexual longing as well as ambiguity within heterosexual scenes. Even Francis Bacon, more known for politically and morally inspired expressionist images, painted seething erotic images. Tom had many contemporaries.
But Tom of Finland had nothing whatsoever in common with Andy Warhol, other than that they were both gay! The comment comparing them is ridiculous (though not the one pinning the attraction for Joe Dalessandro and Jim Morrison to types of male beauty popularized by Tom).
What Tom did is make a kind of longing explicit and exaggerate male genitalia while giving a nod to classic figure drawing. There were others who were similarly unapologetic, like Paul Cadmus. Tom’s skill was undeniable. Sadly he also made a fetish of the costume of German National Socialist soldiers….modeling the costumes of generations of leather fetishists after Nazi uniforms, while stripping the symbolism from them. {A digression…back in the 70’s when I was new to SF a man came into one of the leather bars in full Leather Nazr regalia, complete with swastikas. I walked up to him and said (my actual words) either he leave now or I will kill him. He left. Nobody criticized me or asked me to leave]
abfab
Thank you Denny Downer. Damn, you sure know how to get a man to lose a hard on.
Den
You are a total asshole! You have some problem with reality little boy? Or are you just peevish because your diaper is wet?
What an ugly little child you are!
You post some seemingly progressive shit, but you really are scum.
Den
You REALLY are scum!!
Den
Not at all surprised you take your name from a series that celebrated two drunken sociopathic whores.
Den
And not surprisingly you have no specific info to counter my analysis. Analyses regarding Tom’s fetishism of the Nazis are pretty common from both hetero and homo art historians. But I suspect reality has little interest to you.
correctio
@abfab Den is a treasure for this website and gays more generally. Every time I read one of his comments, such as the one above, I learn something and, as a younger man, feel connected to a history that is bigger than myself. You really need to check yourself.
abfab
GOP TROLLS. Who better to take Tom Of Finland and turn it into a Civil War.
abfab
Only one of the characters was a ”whore”. Edwina was celebate.
correctio
@abfab apologize for your rudeness
still_onthemark
I for one find it reassuring that “abfab” loses his hard on when he thinks about Nazis! That’s a good thing. If only that were true of everyone who posts here, but probably not!
correctio
sometimes history is a boner killer. if you don’t like that fact, there’s plenty of GOP-run states where you can move and get the expurgated version
dbmcvey
While all those artists did do homerotic imagery it was not the same thing as Tom of Finland, or Quaintance for that matter. Tom of Finland’s work was explicit and went beyond “homerotic.” Their work was more in the fine art category.
still_onthemark
@correctio: I’m glad you say that, because frankly you were one of the potential crypto-nazis I was iffy about. But if you say you don’t masturbate to Nazis, I believe you!
abfab
He can’t masturbate. Somewhere along the way correctio was emasculated. And not even one or two words to show his appreciation for Tom Of Finland. Oh who am I kidding, GOPers don’t enjoy the homoerotic.
correctio
@still_onthemark @abfab my relatives were murdered by the Nazis. politely asking you not to toss around that word so casually
abfab
What word? And FYI, you’re unbelievable.
dbmcvey
correctio keeps adding to his story. I’m just not sure how much we can take seriously. All these sudden revelations seem pretty convenient.
abfab
He is George Santos.
Goldendark
Can we PLEASE have a Tom of Finlnd Calendar….PLEASE
Invader7
Tom’s art was the inspiration for many gay men. Though the art was hyper idealized and lacking in diversity (Finland IS a VERY white populated country ( more so when Tom was creating the images), it showcased a hidden , barely known to society esthetic. In many ways having his artwork known ONLY within the GAY community kept our special place in the world more protected and desired. Like many men I considered that his art embodied what hot , mansculine , balls to the wall power sex was / is all about. The gear, the energy, the intimacy, the homoeroticism…ALL of it…
dbmcvey
Fascinating man! The word “iconic” gets overused and misused, but his work is truly iconic.
abfab
He certainly raised the bar.
correctio
abfab
GOP TROLL
abfab
correctio continues to LOWER the bar and has NOT ONE original thought in his GOP brain.
dbmcvey
I’ve noticed among the conservative posters on this site that they suddenly have these revelations that may or may not be true but are very convenient; they have a Latino roomate, they used to be hippies, they have trans friends who agree with them, their ancestors were any number of things.
abfab
Lying about where he went to school.
Lying about where he worked.
Lying about owning a number of rental properties.
Lying about being robbed of his rent money.
Lying about being Jewish, family killed in the holocaust.
Lying about his criminal status in Brazil.
Lying to donors.
Lying about his athletic accomplishments.
Lying about the timing of his mother’s death.
Lying about his campaign finances.
Lying about his name.
Lying to investors.
correctio
@dbmcvey
things I have never claimed on this website
– that I had a Latino roommate
– that I was a hippie
– that I have trans friends who agree with me (altho, by the way, I do have trans friends who agree with me sometimes)
– that I am Jewish
things I have stated, which are true
– I work with young people (college-age)
– the Nazis murdered some of my relatives
a detail I will now add:
– my relatives were murdered for being communists
I disagree with you often but occasionally I agree with your points, and our back-and-forth is positive overall. why do you have to keep falsely accusing me of being a Republican or a conservative?
(assuming dbmcvey and DBMC are the same person, but correct me if I’m wrong and I will take your word for it)
inbama
So now gay men are to be slandered as Republican because of their views regarding a competent sketch artist who drew what’s basically porn for size queens.
It would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.
still_onthemark
Not a factor in your case. People here think you might be a Republican because you often post pro-Republican nonsense.
inbama
No.
You’re just ignorant control freaks who think being gay means I must ignore reason and logic and mouth your idiocies.
You are the folks who keep handing issues to DeSantis and the haters with your recklessness. You spit on the graves of true gay heroes like Harvey Milk and Larry Kramer.
abfab
And we’ll be spitting on yours.
inbama
Sweetheart, you won’t even have a grave.
A Hefty 30 gallon trash bag and a ride to the city dump is more than you deserve.
cheks
Tom of Finland’s art work was instrumental in my acceptance of my sexuality. It shows gay men’s eroticism in a way that is extremely positive, pure, fun, and unapologetic. This type of work is still sorely lacking today where most mainstream and even not mainstream depictions of gay men are still cloaked in some sort of shame when it comes to outward expressions of sexuality.
This shame comes from respectability politics, drug or alcohol abuse, or imbalance of power. I know that’s the reality, especially the respectability politics aspect. But seeing men just enjoy sex with other men was sadly revolutionary.
Zip22Zip
I’ve seen these for most of my life and never knew who the artist was until now. I have always appreciated art of all types because of my inability to recreate an image with any accuracy by attempting to draw or paint what I see or imagine. It’s a shame his ability was dismissed by too many simply because of its content.
Diplomat
I’ve often stared at the perfect curves of these amazing men. His drawings have always kicked ass.
abfab
Happy Birthday, Touko.
Hyvää Syntymäpäivää, Touko!
KirwanArts
How telling that after a profile article, Queerty still cannot show Tom’s art without censoring out the dick and ass even with the 60 year old examples in the article. Is it art or is it porn? Is Queerty able to show a photo of Michelangelo’s statue of David? I think Tom would be disappointed that society still has not come very far with attitudes towards art.
abfab
You’ve heard of The Hays Code, one hopes. Well. The religious right and the evangellical GOPers started it, maintained it and it still holds sway. You can thank them. They still have some power over us, don’t they. Isn’t it a pity.
The Hays Code was this self-imposed industry set of guidelines for all the motion pictures that were released between 1934 and 1968,” says O’Brien. “The code prohibited profanity, suggestive nudity, graphic or realistic violence, sexual persuasions and rape.Jan 14, 2021