Deep Inside Hollywood:
Oprah’s "Gay In Hollywood,"
Tom of Finland, Alan Ball, Ryan Murphy, More

Boots, Biceps And Bulges

The late Touko Laaksonen, the Finnish artist also known as “Tom of Finland,” probably did more to push gay male erotic images into the mainstream than anyone else in the 20th century. His illustrations were designed to inspire lust and to erase the boundary between art and pornography. They also helped re-create happier, hornier self-images for many gay men in the 1970s with their fantasies of muscular masculinity, confidence and outsize sexual achievement. One documentary short film, Boots, Biceps and Bulges: The Life & Works of Tom of Finland, arrived in the late 1980s, while 1990’s Daddy and The Muscle Academy was an LGBT film festival staple in its moment, just as Tom himself was dying at age 71.

Now a biopic currently titled Tom of Finland is in production, ready to tell the story of the sexual and artistic pioneer. Finnish director Dome Karukoski will helm the feature, which has yet to be cast. And it has the official, authorized blessing of the Tom of Finland Foundation, so as extremely hot men find their way into the cast, you’ll hear about it here first.

       Complete article by ROMEO SAN VICENTE

LGBT History Month Icon
Tom of Finland

October is LGBT History Month, celebrated annually to recognize the notable achievements of LGBT people throughout time. Each day in October, Equality Forum features one LGBT icon who has made notable contributions to society.

San Diego Gay & Lesbian News presents a page on Tom of Finland, including a video. Plus, you can discover the other LGBT people selected for the rest of the month.

San Diego Gay & Lesbian News Website

A Note On SHOWstudio's
PUNK
The Punk Aesthetic

JIM FRENCH | Tshirt, 1969

TOM OF FINLAND, 1964

Both Todd Oldham and Holly Johnson cite Vivienne Westwood’s “cowboy” T-shirt, popularized by the Sex Pistols, as their introduction to Tom’s art. Ironically, the image appropriated by Westwood and partner Malcolm McLaren for the infamous shirt was not by Tom, but by Los Angeles artist and Colt Studio’s founder Jim French.

French, never hearing of the shirt, had this to say:

This image was part of a series of a series of six drawings I did with the title ‘Longhorns’. The series was released in 1969, just two years after Colt Studios was created. It was the drawing that first established Colt.

Frontal nudity was not yet legal in 1969, let alone physical contact between men, so I had to be very clever. I remember for this image that I made the space between the two penises as thin as a hair, one of the subtleties lost when cheaply printed, Vivienne Westwood or no.

I trust this will end this tempest in a teapot and put to record straight on the ‘Tom of Finland’ T-shirt. Believe it or not, while he was a great artist, Tom was not the only person drawing noteworthy male nudes in the 1960s and ’70s. There were nowhere as many of my drawings as there were of Tom’s, and mine were in a more realistic vein while his were fantasy, but in the end it is just apples and oranges.

From TASCHEN’s Tom of Finland XXL

More on the PUNK exhibition (Runs through November 15.)

TOM OF FINLAND
by ETAT LIBRE D’ORANGE

Tom probably would have gotten a chuckle out of this advertisement for his cologne.

Etat Libre D'Orange

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