Bob Mizer and Tom of Finland: First American museum exhibition celebrates Homoerotica

TOM OF FINLAND (Finnish, 1920 – 1991), Untitled, 1962, Graphite on paper, Collection of Volker Morlock, © 1962 Tom of Finland Foundation

By the time the gay liberation movement swept through the United States in the late 1960s, both Tom of Finland and Bob Mizer were already well-known and widely celebrated as veritable pioneers of gay art. Decades before Stonewall Inn and the raid on the Black Cat Tavern these evocative and lusty representations of masculine desire and joyful, eager sex between men proliferated and were disseminated worldwide at a time when the closet was still very much the norm—there was no such thing as a gay community. If these artists were not ahead of their time, they might just have foreseen and even invented a time.

Bob Mizer & Tom of Finland  November 2, 2013–January 26, 2014
THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES

Published: 24th September 2013

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