Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play

Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play premieres at Artists Space June 14, marking the largest exhibition of the legendary gay artist’s work ever. In addition to the 200-plus drawings by Touko Laaksonen, a.k.a. Tom of Finland, the exhibit features original documents from which the Finnish artist drew inspiration.

“We all think we know the work, but then I discovered that there was much more to it than what meets the eye,” Artists Space director Stefan Kalmár says. “The main focus of Pleasure of Play is on the one aspect that’s never been shown in its entirety: the collages he made during and towards the end of the second World War.”

These reference binders boast over 300 pages of collages of bearded and uniformed men clipped from magazines from his day job at a global advertising agency. Until 1973, Laaksonen was a regular Don Draper, working by day as a suburban-living, family-oriented ad guru. But by night, his personal art directly opposed the picket fenced life he had so successfully built for himself.

“The sadomasochistic play that’s a component of many of his drawings is a metaphor for gay existence in the 20th century and its relationship to normative, commercial culture,” Kalmár says. “It’s very interesting from a contemporary perspective, where people strive for marriage equality, to also look at different notions of gay relationships.”