“Tom’s Men”

Tom of Finland: Bold Journey
an exhibition and publication at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, 2023

Tom of Finland: The Official Life and Work of a Gay Hero
by F. Valentine Hooven III

Tom of Finland: Made in Germany
edited by Juerg Judin and Pay Matthis Karstens

Tom of Finland: Threesome
three exhibitions at David Kordansky Gallery, 2015–2021

“When you look at the drawings themselves you see what a great draftsman and storyteller he was in the tradition of old master drawings,” Jack Shear explained. “It’s about quality.”

Tom of Finland’s work has transformed from midcentury gay pornography to twenty-first-century art

The specificity of the uniform locates the figures within a drama of authority and hierarchical power play, and over and over those positions are subverted, destabilized, and rendered fluid. A highway patrolman might pull over a biker, might forcibly restrain and gleefully sodomize him, but in the next drawing the roles have reversed. Everyone is having a good time. Several sequences follow an outfit being partially stolen and worn by someone else, a transgression that incites sexual reprisal.

by Jarrett Earnest

Cover art
TOM OF FINLAND Untitled, 1982, Pastel on paper
© 1967 Tom of Finland Foundation
David Kordansky Gallery

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