Synopsis
This bold catalogue brings together the work of two cultural icons for the very first time: Beryl Cook (1926–2008) and Tom of Finland (1920–1991). It was inspired by the 2024 exhibition Beryl Cook / Tom of Finland at Studio Voltaire in London. Beryl Cook was a painter renowned for her exuberant style and descriptions of everyday life. Her work captures the social milieu of the areas she lived in and visited, notably Plymouth. Her most enduring images are of larger-than-life women carousing in nightclubs, eating in cafés or enjoying ribald hen parties, rendered in graphic and colourful forms. Cook’s work came to prominence in the mid-1970s and she quickly became known as one of Britain’s best-loved artists, highly recognised for her distinctive works, which are both celebratory and provocative. Tom of Finland’s pioneering depictions of homosexual machismo in his images of bikers, soldiers, cowboys, sailors and labourers broadly represent queer, leather and muscle communities. A master draughtsman, he used his works to give form to an imaginative universe that, in turn, helped fuel real-world liberation movements and had significant influence on a wide range of cultural figures including the Village People, Freddie Mercury, Jean Paul Gaultier and Robert Mapplethorpe. Beryl Cook / Tom of Finland puts their work into conversation for the first time. The pairing is perhaps unexpected, yet immediate and compelling relationships between their practices are evident. Fundamentally, both artists employed a sustained and coherent way of hyper-realising the body in images that celebrate pleasure and deny shame. Together, their works reveal interconnected ideas surrounding sexuality, gender, taste and class. Artist and writer Huw Lemmey has contributed an incisive new essay exploring the queer contexts inherent to Tom of Finland’s work, but that also finds latent resonance in Cook’s paintings of gay bars and shapely women. He further considers the commercial forms of distribution that made their complex bodies of works highly accessible. Spanning five decades of paintings, drawings and archival materials, this companion catalogue contributes to new readings of the artists’ practices and their enduring impact on popular culture.
About the Author
Joe Scotland is the director of Studio Voltaire. Nicola Wright is the curator of exhibitions at Studio Voltaire. Callum Whitley is the assistant curator of exhibitions at Studio Voltaire. Huw Lemmey is an artist and writer whose recent novels include Unknown Language and Red Tory: MyCorbyn Chemsex Hell.
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