Items related to Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland, Masculinity and Homosexualit...
The art of Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991), famous throughout the world as Tom of Finland, has had an impact upon the culture at large. In this study, Micha Ramakers explores the work and its effect. Illustrated with more than eighty drawings and photographs, Dirty Pictures is lively and entertaining. It encompasses the rise of the gay movement, the world of fine art, the function and functioning of pornography, and the impact of the artist known as Tom of Finland.
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Review:
In a gay heaven, the choir robes would be designed by Gautier after drawings by Tom of Finland. Even on Earth, utopia must be approaching when the musclebound torsos and bulging baskets of Tom's manly men attract a full-length critical study. Art historian Micha Ramakers, who previously edited a monograph of Tom of Finland's drawings, argues persuasively for the influence of these hyper-masculine figures on gay culture since the mid-1950s, when the artist's renderings of fantasy men first began to appear in American beefcake magazines. Although the consistency of Tom of Finland's technique and themes over the four decades of his working life doesn't leave Ramakers much room to discuss the development of his subject's talents, he makes ample use of his few opportunities (like the introduction of more black figures in the mid-1980s, after the artist spent six months in the U.S.). More rewardingly, he uses the pornographer's work as a lens for examining the evolution of gay masculinity since the 1950s. --Regina Marler
About the Author:
Micha Ramakers is an art historian and author of the introduction to The Art of Tom of Finland (Taschen, 1998). He lives in Belgium.
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- PublisherUNKNO
- Publication date1997
- ISBN 10 0304700053
- ISBN 13 9780304700059
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages224
- Rating
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