However, not everyone in 2017 was celebrating. The rise of Tom of Finland in the mainstream also ignited the fiercest internal critique of his legacy.
Selected as Finland's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards. Core Narrative & Historical Context The movie spans over four decades of Laaksonen’s life: Tom of Finland (2017) tom of finland -2017-
In 2017, a different hand: small, thin, tapping a glass screen. That hand orders a Tom of Finland coffee table book from Amazon Prime. It arrives in 24 hours. It is shrink-wrapped. The buyer opens it, flips to plate 47 ( "The Biker and the Cop" ), and feels… nostalgia for a past he never lived. However, not everyone in 2017 was celebrating
: He subverted traditional heterosexual roles—cops, cowboys, and military personnel—to create a new, empowering identity for the gay scene. Liberating Core Narrative & Historical Context The movie spans
The most significant event of 2017 was the opening of the retrospective Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT). This was notable not only for its scale but for its location. In a country with a complex and often conservative stance on LGBTQ+ representation, a major state-run museum hosted a comprehensive exhibition of work defined by overt homoeroticism and leather-clad masculinity. The exhibition framed Laaksonen not merely as an erotic illustrator, but as a formal artist who subverted the visual language of Fascist and Nazi propaganda—specifically the work of sculptor Arno Breker—to reclaim power and eroticism for gay men. By placing his drawings alongside his influences (Cocteau, Schiele) and contemporaries (Mapplethorpe), MOT argued that Tom of Finland’s linework, use of negative space, and construction of heroic archetypes deserved serious art-historical consideration.