With a cornucopia of pert butts and male appendages of heft, "Reality & Fantasy: The World of Tom of Finland," currently on display at Shibuya Parco's Gallery X in Tokyo, is a celebration of transgression, lust, emotional and physical connection.
The artist Tom of Finland’s real name, Touko Valio Laaksonen (1920-91), may not be well-known in Japan, but the iconography that he helped popularize — leather vests and captain’s caps, handlebar moustaches and biker jackets — has become embedded in the global public consciousness as a defining style of butch gayness both in and out of the LGBTQ community.
