Tracing the future of Queer erotic art with Tom of Finland Foundation

MINORU Untitled, 2002

Putting sexuality on the canvas isn’t just for ‘degenerates and deviants’, and Tom of Finland Foundation’s upcoming Emerging Artist Competition aims to dispel the myth for good

When the legendary erotic artist Tom of Finland first started to disseminate his illustrations of hypermasculine, hypersexual men in the mid-1950s, he entered a landscape very different from what we’re familiar with in 2022. With depictions of homosexuality and sexualised male nudity illegal in most countries at the time, he was forced to find alternative outlets for his art. Namely, his images populated beefcake magazines dedicated to ‘fitness’ and ‘health’, where topless men posed to ‘show off their physiques’.

In reality, these magazines “were for Gay boys”, Durk Dehner, founder of Tom of Finland Foundation, tells Dazed. “They immediately knew that it was for them.” Tom’s more explicit works, meanwhile, he had to reproduce himself via film photographs, and post out to an underground network of enthusiasts in envelopes no bigger than a standard letter, since anything larger would be checked by customs. Even in 1980, Dehner ran into similar problems when he set up a mail order company and publishing firm for Tom’s erotic art (the pair met in the late 70s and were partners up until the artist’s death in 1991).

“In the United States, I had to learn very quickly that there were 13 states that you did not mail to,” he says. “Because they had postmaster generals who were trying to lure these adult companies into shipping them material. And as soon as they shipped it across a state line, it became a federal crime, and then the FBI would come and sue the company, close it down, make really outrageous demands on it, break them.” Over the course of his career, Tom of Finland found governments in his homeland, and other European countries such as Germany and the UK, similarly prohibitive.

The birth of the internet and social media, of course, promised change – vast, independent media-sharing networks dangled censorship-free image sharing under Queer and erotic artist’s noses. But have the internet’s main platforms lived up to this promise? Well, let’s see. Facebook is notoriously strict about anything erotic. Under its posting guidelines (which remain notoriously vague and difficult to navigate) the company lists “nudity or other sexually suggestive content” under the things it doesn’t allow.

Similarly, the mere hint of a realistically-rendered, female-presenting nipple on Instagram can get you banned (as Tom of Finland’s official account was, briefly, in 2019). Even Tumblr, the mid-2000s home of everything smutty and sleazy, announced a near-suicidal ban on nudity in 2019. As recent studies have pointed out, erotic expression on these platforms is even more difficult if you’re part of the LGBTQ+ community.

“The state is using Big Tech as their moral police force,” explains SR Sharp, Dehner’s partner and vice president of the Tom of Finland Foundation. Anti-sex trafficking bills such as FOSTA-SESTA – which are responsible for much of this censorship – are important in theory, he adds, but in reality the way that they’re enforced is “deliberately confusing” in a way that proves damaging to self-expression.

Of course, there are some remaining outposts for erotic art on the internet. In lieu of other viable alternatives, some artists have turned to Pornhub to host their work, while others hide out behind a paywall on OnlyFans (although even OnlyFans has made life difficult for its adult creators in the past, in a scandal that threatened to turn into Tumblr 2.0). For Dehner, though, this pigeonholing of erotic art is part of the problem.

E.M.A. STUDIO Untitled, c. 2000

“You can pretty much find everything on the internet,” he says. “But try doing that.” With interesting adult content squirrelled away behind paywalls, or on niche, self-hosted sites, this is easier said than done, meaning that most erotic artworks aren’t getting the audience they deserve. Plus, they aren’t reaching eyes that haven’t actively sought them out. “It’s one thing to find [erotic art] on the internet,” he adds. “It’s another thing to actually present it to a public, present it to a museum, present it to a board of judges, in that you don’t know if they’re going to actually [like it].”

Since it was established by Tom and Dehner in 1984, Tom of Finland Foundation has worked to bring existing erotic art to a broader audience by arranging exhibitions such as this spring’s AllTogether, a show that ran in Paris and Venice. “Young gays who came, they would say to us, ‘You don’t know how important this is for us,’” Dehner says. “This is acknowledging that we exist, and we’re so happy and proud that it is being presented in such a beautiful light.” It’s this kind of reaction – from viewers who aren’t necessarily familiar with the full Tom of Finland story – that the Foundation is looking for.

More importantly, though, Tom of Finland Foundation also provides support for emerging erotic artists, to ensure that the age-old tradition continues, even if it is beset by puritanical censorship on all sides. Primarily, this involves running its pioneering Emerging Artist Competition, which is open to any artist who creates erotic artwork, and has not commercially sold work that portrays sexuality before. In case you need a reference point for how lewd the art can get: the second-ever edition of the contest, held in 1995, was controversially won by the late Garilyn Brune – the painting showed a sweaty priest on his knees, fellating a beatific depiction of Jesus Christ.

READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE BY THOM WAITE

Published: 22nd August 2022

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