Beryl Cook/Tom of Finland review – ‘One’s trying to make you laugh, the other’s trying to make you horny’

Beryl Cook/Tom of Finland review – ‘One’s trying to make you laugh, the other’s trying to make you horny’ate the politics, love the uniform,” would pretty much sum up Touko Valio Laaksonen’s attitude towards the Wehrmacht soldiers he encountered as a young, conscripted anti-aircraft officer in the Finnish army, fighting alongside the Germans in the second world war.

Pert-bottomed and conspicuously well hung, six-packed and nipples erected, poured into their jeans and their leather trousers, Tom of Finland’s groups of hunks and Muscle Marys indulge in all sorts of horseplay. They suck, they rim, they fist, they fuck. They pose and they cruise, they watch and, given half a chance, they join in. There’s a bit of lighthearted BDSM, but not much else to vary the routine. What a tiring round their days must be.

Tom of Finland’s drawings depict men doing things with other men, all the time. Even when they’re trying to look butch or mouthing the occasional yelp, they’re cheery, strong-jawed types who never say no and never take offence, living the lifestyle, 24/7. All of which is a fantasy, of course, and that’s mostly the point. I go from drawing to drawing, in search of something I’ve never seen before, some novel practice or overlooked kink I can try at home later, but it’s the same old same old.

This is a small show, but I wouldn’t want more. The artists are minor but good fun, and both say something about the social mores of the very different worlds they inhabited, which overlap only slightly. Cook remains an enduring fixture in British popular, largely working-class culture, while Tom of Finland’s significance went beyond being a commentator or a recorder of a queer subculture. He helped shape that culture’s codes, its look and behaviour.

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