Roman Emperors - Part 2

 Nero to Vespatian

Nero, the 5th Roman emperor, reigned from 54 to 68 AD.  Considered one of the worst emperors, he is famous for having "fiddled while Rome burned."  Technically that can't be true (the violin was not invented yet), but Nero did sing and play the lyre, giving public concerts that were said to be so bad that some people feigned death to avoid attending them.

Contemporary writings about Nero were far from impartial, so it's hard to separate fact from fiction, but their accounts of his sex life were lurid.  In addition to marrying three wives (not simultaneously), Nero married two men: first the youth Porus, whom he castrated and treated as his wife, and later the freed slave Doryphorus, in which case Nero played the part of the bride.  Marriage between men was not legal, but as emperor, he could do whatever he pleased.

(Statue of Nero in the Aphrodisias Museum in Turkey)

After the fire that destroyed Rome, Nero built a huge palace with a 100-foot-tall bronze statue of himself called the Colossus of Nero.  The statue is long gone, but this is a tiny picture of it carved into an amethyst gem.

A later emperor moved the statue, using 24 elephants, next to what we call the Colosseum, which is named after the Colossus statue.  This is an artist's conception of what it looked like.  The thing he's holding is supposed to be a rudder, not an umbrella.  The statue was altered to represent the Roman sun god Sol Invictus, hence the rays coming out of its head.  Does that remind you of the Statue of Liberty?  It should.  Both statues were modeled after the even more ancient Colossus of Rhodes, a representation of the Greek sun god Helios and one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

After Nero's death, men vied for power, resulting in the Year of the Four Emperors in 69 AD.  This is the 7th emperor, Otho, who reigned for 3 months before committing suicide after losing a battle to the 8th emperor, who reigned for 8 months before being murdered by ...

(Statue of Otho, Louvre museum)

Vespatian, the 9th emperor and final winner.  Sculptors generally tried to make the heads of these statues a realistic likeness, but the bodies were an idealized muscular form, as is obvious in this statue, where the head and the body clearly don't go together.

(Statue of Vespatian, Baia Archaeological Museum, Italy)

College Streaking - Part 5

 California

Photos from the spring 1974 college streaking fad.  These are all from California.

March 16, 1974.  Cal Poly State University students streak into the Cigar Factory restaurant in San Luis Obispo.

Another Cal Poly streaker.

Another Cal Poly streaker.

San Jose State University, March 8, 1974.

More streakers at San Jose State University, March 11, 1974.

USC, March 8, 1974, including a guy on a bicycle and one on a unicycle.

California State University, Northridge, March 22, 1974.

A short video of streakers at UCLA, March 8, 1974.

Performers - Part 1

 Red Hot Chili Peppers

One of the best-known rock bands unashamed of nudity is the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Early on, they gained fame by the gimmick of wearing "socks on cocks", that is, they performed entirely naked except for one strategically placed sock, as in this video excerpt.

But bassist Michael Balzary, better known as Flea, took it a step further and started performing stark naked without even the sock.

He didn't try to hide behind his guitar, either.  This is at the Torhout-Werchter festival in Belgium, 1996.

This is Flea at the opening of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' performance at Woodstock 1999.  The other band members were clothed, but Flea played stark naked in front of a crowd of tens of thousands for over an hour.  Now that's unashamed!

Vintage Military - Part 4

 French Conscription, 1906

France had conscription since the time of Napoleon, but if you had money you could buy an exemption.  That changed in 1905, when universal military service for two years was introduced, with no exemptions except on medical grounds.  All 19-year-old males had to go before a regional review board.  The draftees had to strip naked and be examined by a medical officer in front of a councilor and all the local mayors.

Exemptions were hardly ever granted (although there was a minimum height, the subject of two of these postcards).  Almost anyone who was breathing was pronounced "good for the Service".  This set of humorous French postcards from 1906 illustrated the process.

"And you say you want to go to the cavalry with a chest measurement that's just as big as my calves!"

"If I can't read, Mr. Major, it's not that I have poor vision, but I've never been to school!"

"Come on, don't try to shrink!  You're tall enough for an idiot!"

"So, you're as deaf as thirty-six pots?"  (French "deaf as a pot" = English "deaf as a post.")

"Is he stupid!  Come on, boy, have you lost something?"

"Breathe hard ... from above, of course!"

"Come on, Berluron, stand up straight!"
"Voila, Mr. Major."
"Let's try to gain a few centimeters."

I'm telling you that I passed the review board at _______
and that the Major pronounced me
Good for the Service.

On this last postcard, there's a spot for the sender to fill in the town where the review board met.  At last we see the point of these postcards.  The draftee would send them to friends and family to let them know, in a light-hearted way, that he had been drafted.

Poem of the Day - Part 6

There was a young man from Nantucket

There was a young man from Nantucket ...

(I think you know the rest of the poem.)

Well, this young man certainly has a long ... pipe.  He is not from Nantucket but from Naitingou, Benin, West Africa, photographed by Hector Acebes in 1953.  And although that looks like his penis, it's actually a long penis sheath that he's wearing.  But we can dream.

Artists - Part 2

Aleksandr Deyneka

Aleksandr Deyneka (or Deineka) (1899-1969) was a Russian artist during the Soviet period of Socialist Realism.  This is a self-portrait from 1948.

Socialist realism was based on a Communist doctrine that art must serve the state.  Western avant-garde art was considered decadent.  Soviet art glorified the heroic worker and the heroic soldier.  Deyneka produced a lot of art of this kind, such as Blacksmiths, 1957, above.

However, Deyneka was one of the few Soviet artists to portray male nudes.  Stalin considered female nudes, in particular, to be pornography.  Male nudes were also viewed with suspicion.  But it was politically correct to promote a healthy lifestyle and to depict Soviet people with strong, healthy bodies, and Deyneka managed to thread this needle and avoid official criticism.

This is a 1935 photo by Boris Ignatovich of athletes getting a water massage from a Charcot shower, a jet of water held by the figure in the foreground.  Ignatovich personally gave Deyneka a copy of the photo, which Deyneka admired and decided to recreate as a painting.

This is Deyneka's After the Battle, 1942.  The naked men in the background are more prominent than in the photo, and they are taking conventional showers.  By calling the painting After the Battle, Deyneka transformed the nudes into heroic soldiers, which fit the socialist realism ideology.

We see this as a good-looking guy taking a shower outdoors, but the title, After Work, tries to convince us that it's a painting of a productive Soviet worker, and the nude body is just incidental.

Perhaps in this case the title wasn't convincing enough, resulting in this version of After Work.  Both versions are sometimes dated 1948 and sometimes 1956.  I'm guessing that the nude version was done in 1948, but Deyneka painted a swimsuit over it in 1956 to avoid criticism.

This is A Fine Morning, 1959-1960, sometimes called Good Morning.  Finally we have a Deyneka painting of naked young men just enjoying themselves without the pretense that they have to be heroic soldiers or workers serving the state.

Another copy of A Fine Morning exists as this mosaic.  Deyneka provided mosaics to decorate two Moscow subway stations, including this one in the Mayakovskaya station.  Mosaics are an extremely durable art form – there are mosaics from ancient Greece and Rome that are as bright and colorful today as they were thousands of years ago.  Perhaps, thousands of years from now, archaeologists may uncover this mosaic, safely preserved in the subway.

World Naked Bike Ride - Part 3b

Locations in Great Britain

Continuing the roll call of British cities that have hosted World Naked Bike Rides.

London, England, 2015.  London is of course the best-known WNBR location.  The route goes right past Westminster and Big Ben. 

Ipswich, England, 2019.

Manchester, England, 2018.

Newcastle, England, 2017.

Nottingham, England, 2019.

Portsmouth, England, 2018.

Scarborough, England, 2016.

Sheffield, England, 2010

Southampton, England, 2012

Worthing, England, 2016

York, England, 2015.  This rider, painted as a crash test dummy, is promoting the other main message of the World Naked Bike Ride: that drivers need to be more careful around bicycles.