1
The Lasting Appeal of
Tom Of Finland
The first
male erotic drawing I ever saw was on a cover of 'Physique Pictorial'
magazine in a second hand bookshop, when I was still at school. It
showed a muscular man, dressed only in jeans and boots, being forced
to his knees by a bigger, leather clad companion whose bike he had
accidentally damaged.
Tom of Finland - The Careless
Motorcyclist 4 - Chastised (1963)
This erotic depiction of forced
submission bowled me over. I had never seen anything like it before.
As Valentine Hooven says* Tom's pictures are obviously homosexual and
I felt a bit like Robinson Crusoe must have done when he discovered
the footprint on the beach - there was someone else like me! So this
picture has a special significance for me and I still love it. The
artist of course was Tom of Finland and in the years that followed I
sought out more examples of his pictures and my interest developed
into a lifelong affection and respect for his work.
The lasting impression that this largely
non-sexual image made on me was partly due to the subject matter of
course. I confess that the erotic juxtaposition of face and crotch
was largely lost on me (it was 'hidden erotica' intended for
more-knowing eyes than mine), but I was of an age where men fighting
men fascinated me and more specifically, good looking men being
dominated by others.
Disappointingly, the wrestling I avidly followed
on the television, largely featured fat and ugly men in oversized
swimming trunks (this was in the years before American hunks and
razzmatazz). The handsome specimens I craved, with fine physiques
like those Tom depicted, did exist (e.g. Spencer
Churchill and Steve
Veidor) but they were few and far between and they rarely seemed
to lose or be on the receiving end of any of those humiliating and
painful submission holds. But that word 'submission' neatly sums up Tom's
scene, for the scolded hunk is only being coerced by a firm hand on
his neck and his near-total compliance and humility is what makes
this picture so enjoyable. In the story the careless biker's
contrition has been encouraged by a spanking from the aggrieved owner
(below), but I don't think you need to know that to enjoy his
downfall.
2 Tom - Careless Biker 3 - Spanked
(1963)
Tom's picture captured and made more
real my hunk control fantasy, but it also moved it out of the
artificial wrestling arena and into the real world. Hunky, handsome
men like this could be seen on the streets and the fantasy of seeing
them dominated and controlled thrilled me. The losing man in Tom's
tussle was wearing tight jeans, which were everyday clothing and
surely the most erotic male garment ever invented. Tom seemed to be
able to wring the last drop of sexiness out of the garment. He
captured the skin-hugging texture of denim and the characteristic,
eye-riveting creasing around body joints. Take the time to savour it in all these
pictures here.
It was really this alluring, sensual
drawing style that first gripped my attention all those years ago and
forms the basis of their lasting appeal. The men's bodies are a
beautiful blend of muscularity and litheness and Tom's subtle
shading perfectly captures the soft shaping of faces and the
rounding, undulations and folded crevices of well-built bodies. The
flicks of hair on chest and arms were perfectly calculated to
symbolise raw natural manhood, just enough of the beast to excite.
You can tell Tom saw men as beautiful creatures and they are
unquestionably men not boys. Much of the art of his contemporaries
(Spartacus,
Art
Bob and MacLane, Harry
Bush) featured males who were distinctly boyish or in the case of
Quaintance,
highly stylised, classicised and almost feminised in some cases - and
absolutely hairless, due of course to the prudish publishing
constraints of the day.
3 Quaintance – Saturday Night
To give him credit though, Quaintance,
whose work Tom admired, did produce sexy depictions of men in jeans,
bulges and all, and his picture, Saturday Night, could easily be
mistaken for Tom's work were it not for the glamorised, Latin faces
and slicked up hair. (Perhaps the gay sexual revolution of the 60's
should be attributed to jeans rather than Tom!)
You can see in this
work too a similar seductive style using light and shade to highlight
the attractions of the male physique. This painting seems to be
partly inspired by the dramatic use of light and shade by classical
masters (see example
No 1 , No
2), but I believe both these artists were really drawing on
something more mundane and much closer to home – the female glamour
art of the 40s and 50s. Memorably represented by the paintings on US
combat aircraft and advertising campaigns of this era, this art
featured beautiful, shapely young women in saucy or alluring poses,
in idealised but everyday clothes and in situations which were just
about decent but sometimes very naughty. (there's an example here –
beware it's female!) Natural endowments were subtly enhanced and the
colouring and shading of the picture was specifically designed to
highlight those shapely curves, not to introduce drama or atmosphere
like the Quaintance above.
There's a wider selection at Female
Glamour Art by Gil
Elvgren.
Tom adapted this concept for the male
form substituting masculine clothing, traits and characteristics and
developing his own pencil version of the figure-flattering shading
technique. As it happens, the subdued toning of pencil drawings quite
suits the male subject matter and distances the work from the
frivolous, female equivalents. By more good fortune also, Tom
generally drew clothing - jeans, t-shirts and leather jackets - that
is pretty much timeless and I would think an 18 year old today can
enjoy it just as I did then. By contrast Elvgren's art remains rooted
firmly in it's era and it's original erotic power, deftly fashioned
to suit the conventions and fashions of the day has much diminished
for modern eyes.
4 Tom – TV Repairman from Kake
11(1969)
You can easily get a sense of the
deadening, filtering effect of time by looking at other Tom images
which incorporated fashionable clothing, like the TV repairman (and
his Scandinavian space age TV!) from Kake 11. In their day those
flares were alluring and highly desirable but now look rather silly
and frankly un-Tom-like. (For another scary example try Ringo
and the Renegades).
However, this image is redeemed by it's
portrayal of forceful, impertinent seduction. Groped on two fronts,
the advance is as frightening as it is unexpected, to judge from the
quarry's face. His own
submission is yet to come but if the offending flares are cropped
out, it earns a place as another Tom classic of dominated manhood .
As an aside, note also the table lamp
design, it adds humour and clarifies purpose (as if that were needed)
but not every artist would choose to employ a penis shape in quite
such a penetrated way, it seems to suggest Tom had an interest in
rather more advanced forms of sexual entertainment.
5 Careless Sailor (1962)
It was some years later when I
discovered that the Careless Motorcyclist image which I fell in love
with is actually a reworking of an idea from an earlier picture which I
have called 'Careless Sailor'. It's very similar in concept and
features another iconic stereotype - the sailor in summer whites
(sailors enjoy honorary exemption from disapproval of flares!). In
this picture the sexual imagery is barely 'hidden' at all, although
it's more sophisticated than it seems at first sight – see how the
tip of flaccid cock outlined in the blond sailor's trousers is
positioned just above the wet stain, it's as though the action has
just finished rather than just being started, as you first imagine.
The grovelling, cowed sailor is a
beautiful creation and seems to have the same face as the
motorcyclist (a continuity that adds the spice of repeated
humiliation) but this depiction of him is much more erotic,
outstandingly so. His memorable bubble butt is cleverly framed and
shaped by side-creases in his trousers but the tightly laced-up
waist, contrasted with the glimpse of ball bulge between his open
legs makes him seem enticingly unprotected and vulnerable down below.
His broad manly shoulders and upper torso add pathos to his plight,
the depth of his humiliation, because the sense of him being
dominated and forced to his knees, is even stronger in this picture.
However, for some reason the pairing of the two men is not quite as
successful, the leaning back pose of the top and the more prominent
sexual element seems to diminish the sense of anger and threat
compared with the biker picture.
6 Tom of Finland – Careless
Motorcyclist No1
These days Tom is often portrayed as a
cuddly, father figure and liberationist and in fact the first image
in the biker set (above) is a rather heart-warming, mentoring scene
in which the wayward cyclist is given instruction in how to start the
bike (but unfortunately not how to stop it!). Needless to say the
instructor's hand secretly hovers close to an enticing denim mound,
but leaving that aside, the affectionate friendship illustrated here
(there isn't any obvious age difference) certainly demonstrates Tom's
human warmth and his desire to show affection between men as being
normal and beautiful.
Which makes it all the more surprising
then that the scene should transition so quickly to anger, spanking
and humiliation. Admittedly the final scene (daringly featuring full
nudity) does show smiles and suggest reconciliation, but there's a
similar paradox in the 1970 picture 'Tethered” (see my recent
article 'Just
out of Reach' ) where a leather man reacts badly to the efforts
of a rather well-hung, young Adonis. Is it just meaningless humour
and fantasy? Well perhaps, but Tom is so good at depicting this
harder edge that it has to be taken seriously. You can't portray
anything well in any art form unless you grasp and know the
underlying feelings and motivations. For me it's this harder quality
that makes Tom's work great, it's the reason why he appears in this
series and I will naturally focus on it, but I believe no assessment
of his accomplishments is complete without acknowledging it.
* Quote from “Tom of Finland – His
Life and Times” by F Valentine Hooven
Continued in part 2
For other
artists in the A-Z series click on the label below or search by name.
For more
articles on 'hidden eroticism' click on the label below
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