Gay biker artist

David Kordansky Gallery is a contemporary art gallery with locations in Los Angeles and New York, representing more than fifty artists and artist estates. His drawings of fantastically muscled men engrossed in acts of homoerotic desire comprise one of the most inventive portrayals of the human body in modern times. These pictures of gay men as virile, confident, and unashamed—equally radical for their near-illicit, underground distribution—originated an empowering queer iconography and liberating spirit that has marked popular culture, art, fashion, and human rights. Over a career that spanned nearly fifty years, he produced thousands of images beginning in the s, robbing straight homophobic culture of its most virile and masculine archetypes; bikers, hoodlums, lumberjacks, cops, cowboys, and sailors, and recasting them—through deft skill and fantastic imagination—unapologetic, self-aware, and boastfully proud enthusiasts of gay sex.

Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May – 7 November ), known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinized erotic art, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images " by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. [2] Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3, Just as the emerging gay rights movement started gathering momentum in the United States in the s, a Finnish illustrator captured the community's newfound self-confidence in his works: Touko Laaksonen's pornographic drawings of hyper-masculine bikers, cowboys and sailors did away with the age-old stereotypical depiction of the homosexual man as an effeminate dandy. His illustrations featured extremely masculine types flaunting their hardened bodies in tight leather outfits, celebrating sex with other men. Laaksonen, who went by the pseudonym Tom of Finland after his European homeland, launched an aesthetic revolution within the gay scene: "When he started drawing, there were no real role models for gay men," Richard Villani, creative director of the Tom of Finland Foundation, told DW.

Tom of Finland (aka Touko Valio Laaksonen) is best known for his highly homoerotic depictions of hyper-masculine men decked out in biker leather gear, which inspired a generation of gay men with. Touko Laaksonen, who used the artist name Tom of Finland, was raised by his parents, who were schoolteachers, in an atmosphere of art, literature and music. Obviously talented, by the time he was five he was playing the piano and drawing comic strips. In , Touko went to art school in Helsinki to study advertising.

That Leatherman image was captured in numerous works by a Finnish artist known as Tom of Finland, including one titled “The Motorcycle Man.” Tom of Finland moved to Los Angeles from Finland in the late s and was captivated by the underbelly world of L.A. gay leather biker bars. Tom of Finland is the alias of Touko Valio Laaksonen, who was born in in the small town of Kaarina, Finland. His parents were teachers, and from a young age, he was absorbed in the arts, with a particular passion for drawing and playing piano. When he was growing up, the area was very rural, and he was captivated by the hench muscles and heroic gait of male labourers who worked in his town.

David Kordansky Gallery is a contemporary art gallery with locations in Los Angeles and New York, representing more than fifty artists and artist estates. His subversive drawings ridiculed authority figures and inspired the look of Freddie Mercury and the Village People. W hile sex between men was partially decriminalised 50 years ago in the UK, in Finland it took until Almost years after his birth in the town of Kaarina, Tom of Finland had come home.

The house is the headquarters of the Tom of Finland Foundation, an organisation devoted to preserving the legacy of the most influential homoerotic artist of the 20th century. Across a career that spanned nearly 50 years, Tom created thousands of drawings of muscle-bound, bulgingly priapic sailors, soldiers, cops, cowboys, bikers and lifeguards. His pictures delight in the sheen of leather. .

Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May – 7 November ), known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinized erotic art, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images " by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. [2] Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3, .

Tom of Finland (aka Touko Valio Laaksonen) is best known for his highly homoerotic depictions of hyper-masculine men decked out in biker leather gear, which inspired a generation of gay men with. .