TOM OF FINLAND.

• Author: Shackford, Scott
• Position: FILM - Movie review - Brief article

Tom of Finland is the Norman Rockwell of gay sex. His artwork--drawings worshipping the male physique in unabashedly exaggerated masculine and sexual form--has retained cultural gay prominence decades after the artist's death in 1991.

Tom (actual name: Touko Laaksonen) is an iconic enough figure that his birth country sold postage stamps in 2014 bearing his work. Now a new biopic aims to capture his life, and Finland has submitted it as its country's nomination to the Academy Awards for best foreign-language movie of 2017.

Appropriately named Tom of Finland, the film illustrates Laaksonen's life from his time as a military officer during the 1930s and '40s to his stretch as an advertising graphic designer to his eventual international fame as an erotic...