Durk Dehner

Last updated

Durk Dehner is a businessman, film director, and publisher [1] who co-founded the culturally influential Tom of Finland Company, and later established the Tom of Finland Foundation dedicated to preserving, collecting, and exhibiting homoerotic art (including that of Tom of Finland), a registered historic landmark in Los Angeles, California, US. [2] [3]

Contents

Personal life

Dehner was raised in Alberta, Canada. [4] His father was a farmer and his mother was the daughter of a doctor. Dehner was the youngest of three siblings. His parents stressed the importance of independence and self reliance from an early age, and he often moved about his environment on his own, navigating his way through urban and natural settings with ease. [1] At the age of 13 his parents gave him permission to begin practicing Transcendental Meditation. This daily meditation practice led Dehner to the belief that the solution to his "painful experience of self doubt" was to devote his life to other people. This was the beginning of his philosophical exploration and spiritual awakening. [1]

He began visiting public areas, such as department store bathrooms, [1] to view sexual situations as early as nine years old, and had his first sexual encounter at 11 with an 18-year-old male. Despite the age of his first partner, Dehner did not consider himself abused. Instead, he admits to seeking and enjoying sex with a variety of people throughout his youth. [1]

He fathered a son at age 16 with his then-girlfriend. Dehner recalled his parents being concerned, but non-judgmental about the situation. Dehner has multiple partners of both sexes and various ages throughout his youth. He and his friends would also gather for love ins, consisting of groups as large as 15 people. While his parents did stop these activities, Dehner recalls that they were not judgmental of them. [1]

Dehner learned to develop film at home, so he could develop erotic photography privately. A straight friend, whom he met at the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation, shot photos of Dehner in the woods and Dehner would develop the film in his basement. Dehner later posed for Bruce Weber. [5] He studied fine arts at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, The Allied Arts Center in Calgary, and The Vancouver School of Fine Arts.[ citation needed ]

Professional life and Tom of Finland

Dehner has worked in various jobs, including film direction, publishing, public relations and marketing, editing and production, photography, art collecting, public speaking writing, and event production, . [1] Dehner co-founded the Tom of Finland Foundation with Touko Laaksonen a.k.a. Tom of Finland in 1984. The foundation's original mission was to protect the artist's large collection of works. Later, the mission was enlarged to serve as an erotic art archive, which would protect such work from discrimination and destruction. The Foundation also focuses on promoting healthy, pro-sex attitudes and educating the public on the merit of erotic art. Dehner has taken a leadership role at the foundation since its inception. [6]

Dehner founded the Foundation to help promote the work of Laaksonen in the United States. He understood the effect that his work had on the LGBT community and how he affected the lives and styles of homosexual males. He also had noticed that Laaksonen's work been misused by publishers who reprinted his work without obtaining written permission. Therefore, he offered, as a token of their friendship, to assist Laaksonen in the promotion of his work in the states. In 1978, Dehner secured an exhibition of Laaksonen's work in New York where he met fellow artists Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol. [7]

He, along with administrators and volunteers, maintain the craftsman home that houses the foundation, and was once home to Laaksonen during his final decade. [8] Much of Laaksonen's original pieces are on display, while thousands of others are archived. [9] To protect the space from development, Dehner submitted an application to the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission asking it to make the house a historic monument due to its relation to Tom of Finland and the critical role it played in the LGBT rights movement. [10] The Cultural Heritage Commission adopted the structure on November 23, 2016. [2]

Honors

In 2017 Dehner was inducted into the Leather Hall of Fame. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Mapplethorpe</span> American photographer (1946–1989)

Robert Michael Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A 1989 exhibition of Mapplethorpe's work, titled Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, sparked a debate in the United States concerning both use of public funds for "obscene" artwork and the Constitutional limits of free speech in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom of Finland</span> Finnish artist (1920–1991)

Touko Valio Laaksonen, known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinized homoerotic art, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Dehner</span> American actor (1915–1992)

John Dehner (DAY-ner) was an American stage, radio, film, and television actor. From the late 1930s to the late 1980s, he amassed a long list of performance credits, often in roles as sophisticated con men, shady authority figures, and other smooth-talking villains. His credits just in feature films, televised series, and in made-for-TV movies number almost 300 productions. Dehner worked extensively as a radio actor during the latter half of that medium's "golden age,” accumulating hundreds of additional credits on nationally broadcast series. His most notable starring role was as Paladin on the radio version of the television Western Have Gun – Will Travel, which aired for 106 episodes on CBS from 1958 to 1960. He continued to work as a voice actor in film, such as narrating the film The Hallelujah Trail. Earlier in his career, Dehner also worked briefly for Walt Disney Studios, serving as an assistant animator from 1940 to March 1941 at the company's facilities in Burbank, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francisco Toledo</span> Mexican artist (1940–2019)

Francisco Benjamín López Toledo was a Mexican Zapotec painter, sculptor, and graphic artist. In a career that spanned seven decades, Toledo produced thousands of works of art and became widely regarded as one of Mexico's most important contemporary artists. An activist as well as an artist, he promoted the artistic culture and heritage of Oaxaca state. Toledo was considered part of the Breakaway Generation of Mexican art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim French (photographer)</span> American artist, illustrator, photographer, filmmaker, and publisher (1932–2017)

Jim French was an American artist, illustrator, photographer, filmmaker, and publisher. He is best known for his association with Colt Studio which he, using the pseudonym Rip Colt, created in late 1967. Thomas parted from the endeavor in 1974 leaving French to continue to build what would become one of the most successful gay male erotica companies in the U.S.

Rick Castro is an American photographer, motion picture director, stylist, curator and blogger whose work focuses on bondage and sado-masochistic sex.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adi Nes</span> Israeli photographer

Adi Nes is an Israeli photographer. He has had solo exhibitions at Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio and the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

The Hollywood Erotic Museum was an adults-only museum located in a restored 1926 building on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California specializing in sexual history in Hollywood and the entertainment industry. The six thousand square foot space was also home to the Erotic Museum Hall of Fame, whose eight inductees included Hugh Hefner. It was established by Boris Smorodinsky and Mark Volper in 2004 and closed in mid-2006 due to lack of business and gentrification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrea Fraser</span> American performance artist

Andrea Rose Fraser is a performance artist, mainly known for her work in the area of Institutional Critique. Fraser is based in New York and Los Angeles and is currently Department Head and Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio of the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles.

<i>Daddy and the Muscle Academy</i> 1991 film directed by Ilppo Pohjola

Daddy and the Muscle Academy is a 1991 Finnish documentary film directed and written by Ilppo Pohjola. The documentary is focused on the life and works of Tom of Finland, the pseudonym of Finnish gay erotic artist Touko Laaksonen.

Therman Statom is an American Studio Glass artist whose primary medium is sheet glass. He cuts, paints, and assembles the glass - adding found glass objects along the way – to create three-dimensional sculptures. Many of these works are large in scale. Statom is known for his site-specific installations in which his glass structures dwarf the visitor. Sound and projected digital imagery are also features of the environmental works.

Larry Sultan was an American photographer from the San Fernando Valley in California. He taught at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1978 to 1988 and at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco 1989 to 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicola Filippo</span> American artist

Nicola Filippo is an American pop art collage artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivy Bottini</span> American activist and artist (1926–2021)

Ivy Bottini was an American activist for women's and LGBT rights, and a visual artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oscar Murillo (artist)</span> Colombian artist

Oscar Murillo is an artist working within the painting tradition. He currently lives and works in various locations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom of Finland stamps</span> Finnish postal stamps

The Tom of Finland stamps are a 2014 issue of three Finnish first-class stamps drawn by and celebrating the work of Finnish artist Tom of Finland.

Bill Schmeling, better known by his pen name The Hun, was an American artist, known for his explicit, homoerotic fetish illustrations and comics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alvin Baltrop</span> American photographer (1948–2004)

Alvin Baltrop was an American photographer. Baltrop's work focused on the dilapidated Hudson River piers and gay men during the 1970s and 1980s prior to the AIDS crisis.

Michael Kirwan was an American artist, known for his distinctively stylized erotic illustrations and comics, published in more than 600 magazines. Although he focused primarily on homoerotic themes, he also produced substantial work for the heterosexual and fetish markets. He worked primarily in Prismacolor markers and permanent ink.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kake (comics)</span> Character and series created by Tom of Finland

Kake is a fictional character created by Tom of Finland, the pseudonym of Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen. A gay leatherman distinguished by his hypermasculine physical characteristics and his frequent sexual encounters, Kake appears as the title character of a 26-issue erotic comic book series published by Laaksonen from 1968 to 1986.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Durk Dehner". THE LAVENDER EFFECT®. 2015-05-11. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
  2. 1 2 "Designated Historic-Cultural Monuments". preservation.lacity.org. Archived from the original on 2017-09-10. Retrieved 2017-06-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  3. ↑ webmaster, erotic arts foundation. "Tom of Finland Foundation purpose and goals - erotic art education, curation and collections". tomoffinlandfoundation.org. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
  4. ↑ "The Body: Visual AIDS Web Gallery: Durk Dehner and SHARP -- October 2003". www.thebody.com. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
  5. ↑ "Los Angeles Department of City Planning Recommendation Report" (PDF). Los Angeles Department of City Planning. September 15, 2016. Retrieved June 13, 2017.
  6. ↑ webmaster, erotic arts foundation. "Tom of Finland Foundation purpose and goals - erotic art education, curation and collections". tomoffinlandfoundation.org. Retrieved 2017-06-16.
  7. ↑ "At LA Pride, Muse Durk Dehner Talks Tom of Finland's Popular Resurgence | ArtSlant". ArtSlant. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
  8. ↑ "The Tom of Finland Foundation Collaborates with Artists & Designers for a New Generation". 2015-03-19. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
  9. ↑ "Tom of Finland: From gay icon to mainstream sensation". NBC News. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
  10. ↑ Chiland, Elijah (2016-08-26). "The story behind the Los Angeles home of erotic artist Tom of Finland". Curbed LA. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
  11. ↑ "> Inductees". Leatherhalloffame.com. Retrieved 2019-12-31.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.