To celebrate "Bob Mizer and Tom of Finland," a new exhibition opening at L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art tomorrow, MoCA has produced this fascinating clip, which explores the aesthetic and history of Finnish erotic artist Touko Laaksonen, known forever to the world as Tom of Finland.

According to museum notes, the show revisits how gay artists in the mid-20th century were "robbing straight homophobic culture of its most virile and masculine archetypes (bikers, hoodlums, lumberjacks, cops, cowboys, and sailors) and recasting them—through deft skill and fantastic imagination—as unapologetic, self-aware, and boastfully proud enthusiasts of gay sex."

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Running to January 26, "Bob Mizer and Tom of Finland" will feature a broad selection of Laaksonen's potent homoerotic drawings, alongside Mizer's photographs, films, and examples of his groundbreaking magazine Physique Pictorial—which featured the first  "Tom of Finland" work published in the United States.

Below, some of Laaksonen's work

[caption id="attachment_131062" align="alignnone" width="273"] Published with the permission of the Tom of Finland Foundation[/caption]