I've noted in various earlier galleries that, much to my surprise but pleasure as I'd never anticipated its doing so, my biker art blog has attracted considerable, ongoing interest from the gay community, in particular from American gay leather bikers, who have kindly offered me via social media & email contact a number of useful, insightful suggestions & ideas re possible future content for it. One such suggestion that I've received on several different, independent occasions is to present a gallery in which I showcase biker pictures created by me but which were inspired by the nowadays globally-celebrated artwork produced by Tom of Finland (1920-1991), one of the most iconic & influential artists of the 20th Century.
Born Touko Valio Laaksonen, in the southwestern Finnish town of Kaarina, near Finland's second city, Turku, but known worldwide via his famous tag-name Tom of Finland that he used whenever he illustrated books & magazines, Tom specialised in drawing spectacularly life-like homoerotic art featuring hypermasculine, impossibly well-endowed & insatiably lusty guys often engaged in all sorts of explicit activities with one another - I'll leave you to fill in the details here! Predictably, the subjects depicted in Tom's work were nothing if not controversial, especially back in those much more cloistered, closeted, buttoned-up early post-WW2 times when his work first began to attract widespread public attention, but no one could dispute or deny the incredible artistry that they demonstrated. This in turn led to Tom's gradual mainstream acceptance, to the extent that in September 2014 Itella Posti, the national postal service of his home country of Finland, proudly issued a series of official commemorative postage stamps celebrating his life & depicting some of his more conservative art - this became the most extensively-purchased Finnish commemoratives set ever! Truly the ultimate stamp of approval, in every sense!
During a busy working life spanning half a century, Tom produced countless illustrations, many of them first appearing in men's keep-fit, body-building 'beefcake' magazines during his earlier years, but by far his most popular have always been his black-leather-themed ones, especially those that he produced for a series of 31 issues of an x-rated comic starring a character that he created himself - a louche & ever-lusty leather-clad biker named Kake (pronounced 'khaki'). He also produced many additional, generic biker images over the years. So this was why my blog's gay biker followers suggested to me that a T of F tribute gallery, containing Kake-inspired pictures of my own (but all of them absolutely SFW - no NSFW/X/R/Adult/Mature-rated images here!! - would surely attract plenty of positive interest.
So here it is. posted by me on what is today the 106th anniversary of Tom of Finland's birth (8 May 1920). Some of its pictures & short video clips were indeed inspired to varying extents by Kake, others are short animated clips based upon original Kake or other T of F biker drawings, including Tom's famous afore-mentioned full-colour head-and-shoulders portrait of Kake. In recent times, AI has made the once-impossible now possible - bringing Tom's iconic art to life, literally, and any number of animated equivalents of his work can be found online in innumerable sites & social media pages.
Legally, however, all copyright & commercial interests in Tom's work are fully owned by the Tom of Finland Foundation (ToFF - please click here to view its official website), so hopefully those who animate his work in such video clips are not doing so for any personal commercial gain, because they have no legal rights whatsoever to do so. As for me, I wish to state categorically right away that all of the pictures & video clips presented here are indeed merely T of F lookalike works created by me, nothing more - they are NOT original works by Tom & therefore should not be looked upon as such in any way, shape or form. Needless to say, therefore - but I'll say it anyway, for absolute clarity here - I make no claim of copyright ownership or any commercial involvement or gain re any of these images in any way. I created them simply as a very sincere but totally non-commercial tribute of mine to Kake & thence Tom of Finland - the artistic genius & bold, unflinching pioneer in the field of challenging modern-day art who created this ever-popular raunchy biker.
The Tom of Finland Foundation (ToFF) mission has been responsible for protecting, preserving & promoting Tom's irreplaceable output of illustrative work (plus those of other artists from the same genre of art) since it was established in 1984 by Tom and his longterm friend & business partner Durk Dehner. It is based in TOM House, owned by Dehner, which was Tom's Los Angeles home for much of the last decade of his life, and today it is filled with his unique assemblage of personal possessions & memorabilia amassed by him throughout his career. Back in the day, Tom had frequently suffered from the blatant theft of his work by collectors, but thanks to the Foundation his incredible legacy is safeguarded & assured for all time, so that future generations can enjoy it as much as we do now & have done in the past. Needless to say, however, the efficient running of such a major establishment does not come cheap. So if you're a T of F fan and would like to contribute in some way to this very noble, notable cause, please click here to visit the ToFF's officuial website, where you can learn much more about its origin, causes & aims, its annual ToFF Festival & other fundraising social events, and also where you can purchase online a wide range of official T of F merchandise, showing the world that you're a proud Tom's Man!
As many of my images in this gallery are video clips, what I've decided to do for ease & speed of viewing is to present them not only as single separate clips but also as five segued sequences, i.e. with each sequence containing several video clips segued together into a single continuous segment. Interspersed among the single separate vid clips, moreover, are my still pictures. So let's begin with the five segued video sequences, followed by the pictures & single vid clips.
And below are my still pix & single vid clips:
More of my AI biker images next time!
No comments:
Post a Comment