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‘I wanted my drawings to show gay men being happy and positive’
Tom King pays tribute to the subversive illustrator TOM OF FINLAND

THROUGHOUT post-classical art, there’s a venerable tradition of male erotica hiding in plain sight.

Michelangelo’s David, Fabre’s Death of Abel and numerous scantily clad — if a little punctured — Saint Sebastians, to name but a few, indulged homosexual desire as much as they conveyed religious sentiment, and often more so.

For the most part, these works were only ever gazed upon by an elite, privileged few. But, as John Berger pointed out, mass-production democratised the image as much as the printing press did the written word.

Untitled, 1981 © Tom of Finland, Tom of Finland Foundation Permanent Collection
Untitled, 1974 © Tom of Finland, Tom of Finland Foundation Permanent Collection
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