Tom of Finland: love and liberation

S.R. Sharp has just opened a Tom of Finland show at London’s House of Illustration. Love and Liberation is the UK’s first public retrospective of Tom’s work — and Sharp is brimming with excitement.

- Braden Bjella

“He is the only artist I know of that has had his works kept underneath beds and at the same time displayed with fine art books on coffee tables,” remarks Sharp. Sharp is Vice President and Curator of the Tom of Finland Foundation, a role that sees him organising shows to promote and preserve the work of Tom and other erotic artists. Love and Liberation is another exhibition in this series, showcasing previously unseen works from the artist’s long and now highly celebrated career.

But getting the point where Tom’s drawings hang in galleries around the world was a hard-fought battle, both for Tom himself and archivists like the Tom of Finland Foundation. During his life, Tom had to work around the law, often resorting to euphemism or character work to deliver his desired message. “In this exhibition,” for example, “there are works that depict young men fighting circa 1960 in the USA,” says Sharp. “At that time, it was not permitted to show two men touching in an affectionate manner. The only way to display a relationship in print within the USA was to show them either fighting, wrestling or possibly in a period depiction as two gladiators.”