Turns out, the line between erotic and bawdy is pretty thick. And right here in Clapham you’ve got Tom of Finland on one side of it, and Beryl Cook on the other.
Studio Voltaire has brought the two artists together for a duo show exploring the links between Tom’s hyper-exaggerated homoerotic pornography and Beryl’s titillating seaside British comedy naughtiness.
Let’s get this out of the way, duo shows of long-dead artists like this don’t work. You’re meant to explore the supposed similarities between the works, but you spend your whole time thinking about a nonexistent relationship between artists who never knew each other, instead of just thinking about the work. It’s curation over art. Tom and Beryl are done no favours by being shown together. They both depict bums a lot, but that’s about the extent of the similarities. This could and should have been two separate solo exhibitions.
They both depict bums a lot, but that’s about the extent of the similarities
But it’s too late for that, they’ve done it, so here we are.
Both artists are brilliant in their own way. Tom pushes macho musculature and hyper-male bravado to an erotic extreme. His leather clad bikers bulge and ripple, they tease and play, smirk and pinch, fist and lick and spurt and penetrate. It’s idealised masculinity, it’s attraction, musk and spunk being celebrated, glorified, revelled in at a time when homosexuality was illegal. It’s brave, fun, sexy art.
And he makes poor Beryl look tame, which is a bit unfair. She painted the lascivious, joyful hilarity of her native Plymouth, the big characters, the slap and tickle of nights on the tiles in England. Her figures are big and buxom; fat-arsed lads dance and sink pints, big ladies dressed as maids parade out of a nightclub, women piss themselves laughing at a male stripper, spank a man in lingerie or get lucky with a bloke down the pub. It’s everyday British bawdiness put on display and elevated. Gorgeous, silly, funny, everyday stuff.
It’s got naff all to do with Tom of Finland though.
