Customer Reviews

Tom of Finland: His Life and Times (Stonewall Inn Editions)

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Tom of Finland has become a permanent fixture in gay male popular culture. He is known for the ultramasculine/butch depictions of men in his artwork, perhaps in miltary uniform or in leather. The men's hyper-accentuated masculine bodies have become a paradigm of sorts in gay male culture to emulate...or to clone. TOM OF FINLAND: HIS LIFE AND TIMES is a biography of Tom of Finland the artist. It sheds light on his motivations to draw his men the way he does. It's a quick read, with lots of pictures that show the evolution of the Tom of Finland man. It would have been great to see the pictures in color. This book is a very interesting read for those interested in gay popular culture. It certainly opened my eyes...

A definitive biography of the man and his work, this book is thouroughly engrossing. The pictures reveal all aspects of this leatherman's ideals, and the text offers insights into his life and inspirations.

This book examines the life and motivations of the famous and well-loved erotic artist; Tom of Finland. With many pictures from Tom's comic strip style early drawings through his evolution as a skilled master of the homoerotic.

For all the old and new fans of Tom of Finland's exquisite drawings of the hyper-masculine male physique, this book gives some of the personal history of the artist and the original models and stimulus for his erotic drawings. To see pictures of the Finnish men who worked on the sea and in the timber industry who were the inspiration for his work helps to understand his seminal period. The book from there further explicates his vision of the homage to the strong male types of the military, police and working men which he and many gay men find attractive. This is a book geared to adult gay men. For those "in the life", one can identify his "old guard" depictions of young men finding their "Sir" in the local working class, sailor or leather bar, and whose adulation of the symbols of such hyper masculinity is open and fearless. Tom has no peer in gay art, and is the model which many artists strive towards in this type of erotic, masculine and celebratory depictions of "real" men, comfortable with their physical strength and lust.