Season 1 | Episode 9 | Scene 23:41
CAST
John Waters
Peter Berlin
Stefan Kalmár, Artists Space
Dian Hanson, Taschen
Durk Dehner, Tom of Finland Foundation
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Tag Archives: Artists Space
The co-chief art critics for The New York Times on the most notable themes of the year.
Alternative Spaces
In the city’s busy alternative spaces, art history continued to expand. Artists Space immersed us in the achievement of Tom of Finland, the Ingres of 20th-century homoerotic art, and his bounty of popular-culture source materials.
An untitled Tom of Finland work from 1975. With his images of buff gay men, the artist all but invented the hypermasculine “clone” look of the 1970s, with its defining wardrobe of leather and jeans. Tom of Finland Foundation, Permanent Collection
Complete list by Holland Cotter and Roberta Smith
VINCE ALETTI
TOM OF FINLAND (ARTISTS SPACE, NEW YORK) The year’s sexiest show was also one of its smartest. In the gallery’s main space, Tom’s meticulously refined drawings—as elegant as they are erotic—were installed in a series of parallel corridors, offering viewers a series of intimate encounters with the works and engendering an excitement not unlike that of cruising. Even when they’re not designed as storyboard sequences, his pictures have a terrific narrative compression—an energy straining for the inevitable climax. His pumped-up supermen are ready for anything, often in full view of voyeurs who act as stand-ins for an avid audience. At the satellite gallery on Walker Street, the annex show of densely collaged scrapbook pages—faces, physiques, fetish wear—was a fascinating glimpse into Tom’s private library of sources and inspirations.
TOM OF FINLAND (Touko Laaksonen, Finnish, 1920 – 1991), Untitled, 1985, Graphite on paper, 13.00” x 9.38”, © 1985 Tom of Finland Foundation
Vince Aletti reviews photography exhibitions for the New Yorker and photography books for Photographmagazine. He contributes regularly to Aperture, W, and Document. Untitled Anonymous, a book featuring found photographs from his collection of male images, was published in September by Andrew Roth’s PPP Editions.
