Artists Space

Tom of Finland:
The Pleasure of Play

June 13 – September 13, 2015

The Pleasure of Play is the most comprehensive Tom of Finland survey exhibition to date, spanning six decades to include more than 180 drawings, 1930s childhood paper dolls, the full set of 1940s gouaches along with triptychs, individual drawings, storyboards and over 300 reference pages.

Drawing of a muscular man with a combover and handlebar mustache, grappling the Earth and grinning as he inserts his penis into the planet.
Tom of Finland, Untitled, 1976. Graphite on paper. Courtesy Collection Ulrich Tangermann, Hamburg. [Drawing of a muscular man with a combover and handlebar mustache, grappling the Earth and grinning as he inserts his penis into the planet.]

Tom of Finland’s biography parallels pivotal moments of 20th century (gay) history, bearing witness to the disasters, the turmoil and the radical changes that took place during his lifetime. Indeed, his work stands in dialectical relationship to these events and the often oppressive culture that surrounded him.

Starting from an early age, Tom of Finland played with the iconographic conventions upon which both the representation and the very conception of masculinity are based. His emblematic, larger-than-life drawn phalluses threaten not only the existing symbolic order of heterosexuality, but also reorganize the principles by which (homo)sexual desires are structured. This fearless portrait of sexuality can also be read as a portrait of the sadomasochistic relationship that is at play between culture and subculture itself, an aspect that runs through gay culture of the 20th and 21st centuries as much as it is present in Tom of Finland’s biography and work.

Working from 1956 to 1973 as senior art director at one of the first global advertising agencies, it is likely that Tom of Finland had access to a range of global mainstream publications as well as illegally published early gay magazines – both from which he would meticulously cut out details and compose on single pages to later use as studies, or as he called them, reference pages.

It is telling that many of these cutouts are taken from global print campaigns; Tom of Finland seemingly studying and taking apart the representations of maleness and gender-assigned attributes in mainstream media, and fusing them with cutouts from gay periodicals. Originally separated into binders, the majority of these collages were sorted by distinct taxonomies: leather jackets, motorcycles, uniforms, beards, hairdos and so forth. On rare occasions he also drew directly onto these cutouts,to either amplify or reduce the existing attributes.

In some respects the collages are key to an understanding of Tom of Finland’s work. During the day (at least until 1973), as an acclaimed advertising executive Tom of Finland was involved hands-on in creating the hetero-normative vision of the happy suburban family of the late 1950s; while at night, he would cut up the very basis of his own work (print advertising) to study, to analyze and to categorize – turning these reference pages towards the exact opposite of their origin. One aspect of Tom of Finland’s drawings is that the faces of his protagonists feature a familiar, recognizable likeness – these bold, grinning faces, while in the act of sadomasochistic play, present a fearless vision of sexuality pointing towards the culture that constructed the relationship between sexuality and fear in the first place.

Because of Tom of Finland’s compound status as artist and sub-culture icon, his work has for years been admired by many artists including the late Mike Kelley, who in 1988 invited him to speak at CalArts (documentation of which is on view at Artists Space Books & Talks); Raymond Pettibon, who became a lifetime supporter of the Tom of Finland Foundation; as well as Richard Hawkins, who continues to work with the Foundation today.

Touko Laaksonen, aka Tom of Finland (1920, Kaarina – 1991, Helsinki), was a child of grammar school teachers and grew up in rural Finland. At the age of 19 he enrolled in a distance learning advertising course. Soon drafted, he joined the Finnish Army in its fight against the Soviet invasion. After the war he stayed in Helsinki, studying classical piano at the renowned Sibelius Academy. While at the Academy, Tom of Finland worked as freelance graphic designer, later becoming senior art director at the Helsinki office of the global advertising agency McCann Erickson.

While living life as an adman in Helsinki, his global career as an iconic gay figure was jumpstarted in 1950s Los Angeles, through his ongoing contributions to Bob Mizer’s publication Physique Pictorial. From the 1960s onwards, he frequently published his now well-known comic series with the Danish publishing house DFT, COQ International and the Swedish Revolt Press, and later through his own Tom of Finland Company.

In 1978, Tom of Finland had his first New York exhibition at Stompers, a boots store in the West Village. His first gallery exhibition was at Feyway Studios, San Francisco, where Tom of Finland was befriended by Robert Mapplethorpe, who in 1980 helped him get his first major New York exhibition at Robert Samuel Gallery.

During his 17 years at McCann, a job he quit in 1973, Tom of Finland started traveling extensively throughout Europe. On his many trips, particularly to London, Hamburg and Berlin, he would take his drawings to sell or to gift to men that he met in the local gay scene, thus proliferating his work while establishing an underground distribution network, and with it a network of friends and admirers. From the 1970s onwards Tom of Finland began to visit the US more frequently. While he never permanently resided in the states, during the last decade of his life he spent equal time between Helsinki and Los Angeles.

June 14, 2015

Touko Laaksonen (Tom of Finland)

Harri Kalha, Kati Mustola and Leena-Maija Rossi
Talks & Discussion
5pm

August 28, 2015

Summer Special
Tom of Finland Film Evening
Screenings
7pm

Four pornographic illustrations of men in jail cells are framed on the wall.
Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play. Installation view, Artists Space, 2015. [Four pornographic illustrations of men in jail cells are framed on the wall.]
Six pornographic illustrations of men near trees are framed on a wall.
Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play. Installation view, Artists Space, 2015. [Six pornographic illustrations of men near trees are framed on a wall.]
Two illustrations hung on a wall. On the right, a naked man inserts his penis into the a globe. On the left, a man gazes up at a rendering of Michealangelo
Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play. Installation view, Artists Space, 2015. [Two illustrations hung on a wall. On the right, a naked man inserts his penis into the a globe. On the left, a man gazes up at a rendering of Michealangelo's "David."]
A vitrine displaying a nuclear family of paper dolls with their various options of clothing.
Tom of Finland, Untitled, ca. 1930. Watercolor, pen and ink on paper. Courtesy The Family of Touko Laaksonen, Finland. [A vitrine displaying a nuclear family of paper dolls with their various options of clothing.]
Two illustrations framed on a wall. On the left, two men, dressed in suits, engage in intercource behind a women sat in a chair. On the right, a half naked man sits on a bench in a cell above a man licking his leg, and an exposed butt that is plugged.
Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play. Installation view, Artists Space, 2015. [Two illustrations framed on a wall. On the left, two men, dressed in suits, engage in intercource behind a women sat in a chair. On the right, a half naked man sits on a bench in a cell above a man licking his leg, and an exposed butt that is plugged.]
Two color illustrations are framed on a wall. On the left, a man performing oral intercorse to another man as a man in uniform watches in the background, gripping his penis. On the right, a man in uniform has intercoarse with a half-naked man, as a man in uniform watches from around the corner.
Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play. Installation view, Artists Space, 2015. [Two color illustrations are framed on a wall. On the left, a man performing oral intercorse to another man as a man in uniform watches in the background, gripping his penis. On the right, a man in uniform has intercoarse with a half-naked man, as a man in uniform watches from around the corner.]
A wall of pornographic illustrations displayed in frames at eye level.
Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play. Installation view, Artists Space, 2015. [A wall of pornographic illustrations displayed in frames at eye level.]
Four pornographic illustrations framed on a wall.
Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play. Installation view, Artists Space, 2015. [Four pornographic illustrations framed on a wall.]
An angled view of vitrines and book cases displaying collages.
Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play. Installation view, Artists Space, 2015. [An angled view of vitrines and book cases displaying collages.]
A book case displaying 5 paper collages of men
Tom of Finland, Reference Pages, ca.1966 – 90. Collage on paper. Courtesy Tom of Finland Foundation. [A book case displaying 5 paper collages of men's portraits.]

Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play Exhibition Handout

Leading exhibition support provided by:
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, through its Curatorial Fellowship Program; The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, through its Mobius Fellowship Program; The Friends of Artists Space; The 40 Years Artists Space Program Fund; David Kordansky Gallery; and Galerie Buchholz

The Tom of Finland Exhibition Supporters Circle:
Philip Aarons & Shelley Fox Aarons, Shane Akeroyd, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Elmgreen & Dragset, Nicoletta Fiorucci (Fiorucci Art Trust, London), Greene Naftali, Robert Gober & Donald Moffett, Mark Grotjahn & Jennifer Guidi, Wade Guyton, Michaeljohn Horne, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Robert Longo, Bjarne Melgaard, John Morace & Tom Kennedy, Lari Pittman & Roy Dowell, Richard Prince, Jack Shear, Cindy Sherman, Brent Sikkema, Gordon VeneKlasen, Danh Vo, and Jordan Wolfson

Artists Space Exhibitions Program is supported by:
The Friends of Artists Space; Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation; Cowles Charitable Trust; The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency

We would like to extend our gratitude to the Tom of Finland Foundation, especially, Durk Dehner and S.R. Sharp; John Morace; and Richard Hawkins and to all of the lenders to the exhibition.

Works from the Tom of Finland Foundation, Permanent Collection courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin.

    A naked man lays across the frame, resting on his elbows reading a book. Another man sits in between his open legs, reading a book that is resting on his glutes.
    Tom of Finland, Untitled, 1987. Graphite on paper. Courtesy Tom of Finland Foundation. [A naked man lays across the frame, resting on his elbows reading a book. Another man sits in between his open legs, reading a book that is resting on his glutes.]