Finland was also a huge artistic inspiration in the world of gay erotica at a time when anything gay was brown paper bagged on the bottom shelf. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade and has produced over 3,500 images!
Born and raised in South Finland (hence the pseudonym), Touko Laaksonen's parents were school teachers. He lived with them in a home attached to the schoolhouse until the age of nineteen when he moved to Helsinki. There, he studied advertising and began drawing erotic images for his own pleasure.
This was 1939 and the idea of a gay culture was pretty much forbidden, which is probably why Laaksonen destroyed all of those early images before joining the Finnish army during World War II.
"In those days, a gay man was made to feel nothing but shame about his feelings and his sexuality. I wanted my drawings to counteract that, to show gay men being happy and positive about who they were. Oh, I didn't sit down to think this all out carefully. But I knew - right from the start - that my men were going to be proud and happy men!"
His experience in WWII helped the development of his fetishistic interest of men in uniform, a common theme in his art.
"In my drawings I have no political statements to make, no ideology. I am thinking only about the picture itself. The whole Nazi philosophy, the racism and all that, is hateful to me, but of course I drew them anyway – they had the sexiest uniforms!"
These early drawings are not the Tom of Finland style you are used to. They are considered softer, more romantic and depicted middle class men, where as the work you are probably familiar with features exaggerated muscles and lower class types like sailors and construction workers.
After World War II he returned to his studies and submitted his artwork to the influential American magazine Physique Pictorial. The artwork was published in the Spring 1957 issue, accredited by the editor to Tom of Finland. And so the name was born.
Like most artists, Finland was a rebel. His style and content for Physique Pictorial and his work outside of that was partially influenced by the U.S. Censorship Codes that restricted depiction of "overt homosexual acts". In a lot of ways his work was about sex, but it was more than that.
However, when these codes were abolished in 1962 when the Supreme Court ruled that nude male photographs were not obscene, it sort of backfired on Finland. The market for the magazines that featured his work collapsed. He reacted by creating more explicit drawings and stylized his figures with exaggerated physical aspects, particularly their genitals and muscles. Thus, the Tom of Finland you are familiar with was born.
Finland's work has drawn both admiration and disdain from different quarters of the artistic community. Some critics seem to get hung up on his work featuring Nazi soldiers. This is only a small, early part of his legacy.
Finland's detailed drawing technique has led to him being described as "a master with the pencil", while others have described it as "illustrative without expressivity".
There is considerable argument over whether his depiction of "Supermen" is superficial and distasteful, or whether there is a deeper complexity in the work which plays with and subverts those stereotypes. For example, some critics have noted examples of apparent tenderness between traditionally tough, masculine characters, or playful smiles in sado-masochistic scenes.
The trustee of The Judith Rothschild Foundation, Harvey S. Shipley Miller, said, “Tom of Finland is one of the five most influential artists of the twentieth century. As an artist he was superb, as an influence he was transcendent".
I believe that the validity of art is in the mind of the viewer.
Not only did Finland cultivate a style of artistic expression never before seen, but his work was influential in bringing an idea of gay culture into acceptance. Although his method was erotic, it was an approach no one would have thought of at the time. Making him an icon.
What made Finland's work amazing, was the passion he had for creating it.
"If I don't have an erection when I'm doing a drawing, I know it's no good."
Do you have the Tom of Finland Toile?
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