MOCA
presents Bob Mizer & Tom of Finland, the first American museum
exhibition devoted to the art of Bob Mizer (1922-1992) and Touko Laaksonen, aka
"Tom of Finland" (1920-1991), two of the most significant figures of
twentieth century erotic art and forefathers of an emergent post-war gay
culture. The exhibition features a selection of Tom of Finland's masterful
drawings and collages, alongside Mizerâ??s rarely seen photo-collage
"catalogue boards" and films, as well as a comprehensive collection
of his groundbreaking magazine Physique Pictorial, where drawings by Tom
were first published in 1957. Organized by MOCA Curator Bennett Simpson and
guest co-curator Richard Hawkins, the exhibition is presented with the full
collaboration of the Bob Mizer Foundation, El Cerrito, and the Tom of Finland
Foundation, Los Angeles.
Tom of Finland is
the creator of some of the most iconic and readily recognizable imagery of
post-war gay culture. He produced thousands of images beginning in the 1940s,
robbing straight homophobic culture of its most virile and masculine archetypes
(bikers, hoodlums, lumberjacks, cops, cowboys, and sailors) and recasting
themâ??through deft skill and fantastic imaginationâ??as unapologetic,
self-aware, and boastfully proud enthusiasts of gay sex. His most innovative
achievement though, worked out in fastidious renderings of gear, props,
settings, and power relations inherent therein, was to create the depictions
that would eventually become the foundation of an emerging gay leather culture.
Tom imagined the leather scene by drawing it; real men were inspired by it â?¦
and suited themselves up.
Bob Mizer began
photographing as early as 1942, but unlike many of his contemporaries in the
subculture of illicit physique nudes, Mizer took the Hollywood star-system
approach and founded the Athletic Model Guild in 1945, a film and photo studio
specializing in handsome natural-bodied (as opposed to exclusively
muscle-bound, the norm of the day) boy-next-door talent. In his myriad
satirical prison dramas, sci-fi flix, domesticated bachelor scenarios and
elegantly captivating studio sessions, Mizer photographed and filmed over
10,000 models at a rough estimate of 60 photos a day, seven days a week for
almost 50 years. Mizer always presented a fresh-faced and free, unashamed and
gregarious, totally natural and light-hearted approach to male nudity and
intimate physical contact between men. For these groundbreaking perspectives in
eroticized representation alone, Mizer ranks with Alfred Kinsey at the forefront
of the sexual revolution.
Though Laaksonen
did not start spending time in Los Angeles until the early 1980s, he had long
known of Mizer and the photographer's work through Physique Pictorial, the
house publication and sales tool for Athletic Model Guild. It was to this
magazine that the artist first sent his drawings and it was Mizer, finding the
artworks remarkable and seeking to promote them on the magazine's cover, but
finding the artist's Finnish name too difficult for his clientele, who is
responsible for the now famous "Tom of Finland" pseudonym.
By the time the
gay liberation movement swept through the United States in the late 1960s, both
Tom of Finland and Bob Mizer were already well-known and widely celebrated as
veritable pioneers of gay art. Decades before Stonewall Inn and the raid on the
Black Cat Tavern these evocative and lusty representations of masculine desire
and joyful, eager sex between men proliferated and were disseminated worldwide
at a time when the closet was still very much the norm—there was no such thing
as a gay community. If these artists were not ahead of their time, they might
just have foreseen and even invented a time.
Spanning five
decades, the exhibition seeks a wider appreciation for Tom of Finland and Bob
Mizer's work, considering their aesthetic influence on generations of artists,
both gay and straight, among them, Kenneth Anger, Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
David Hockney, G.B. Jones, Mike Kelley, Robert Mapplethorpe, Henrik Olesen,
Jack Pierson, John Waters, and Andy Warhol. The exhibition also acknowledges
the profound cultural and social impact both artists have made, especially in
providing open, powerful imagery for a community of desires at a time when it
was still very much criminal. Presenting the broader historical context and key
aspects of their shared interests and working relationship, as well as more
in-depth solo rooms dedicated to each artist, the exhibition establishes the
art historical importance of the staggering work of these legendary figures.
