Calendars - Part 3

 The Farmers Calendar (UK)

Another naked British calendar is The Farmers Calendar.  Proceeds from the calendar are given to a different charity each year.

This is from the first Farmers Calendar in 2000, the brainchild of photographer Nicola de Pulford.

The March 2003 calendar image showed this guy in a wide open field.  I have cropped some of these images to focus on the feature of interest.

June 2018 featured George Mills of Ramsbottom showing us his bottom.

Sept. 2018 featured Andrew Wood of Keighley.

Nov. 2018 featured Daniel Cook of Keighley and his cow.

A tractor driver from the 2019 calendar.

We close with the cover photo for the 2018 calendar, featuring Joseph Holmes of Oxenhope.  If he doesn't make you want to stand behind British farmers, nothing will.

Artists - Part 5

 Sascha Schneider

At the beginning of the 20th century, German painter Sascha Schneider (1870-1927) was one of the most well-known artists.  A generation later he was relegated to obscurity.

In 1903, Schneider (right) met best-selling German author Karl May (left).  May wrote adventure stories set in foreign lands, including the American Wild West.  May's books sold over 200 million copies worldwide.  Schneider provided the cover art for many of May's books.

Schneider was gay, and a large number of his works feature nude men.  This early work is The Anarchist, 1894.  In those days anarchists were viewed as bomb-throwers, but portraying the bomb-thrower as naked seems to have been Schneider's idea.

In addition to featuring naked men, many of Schneider's works have a darker side.  This is another early work, Gefühl der Abhängigkeit (Feeling of Dependence), 1894.

This is called Hypnosis.  To us it looks like a vision of evil, but astonishingly, the author of a 1902 instruction manual on hypnosis used it as an illustration, writing, "The painting by Sascha Schneider illustrates the power of hypnosis in a captivating artistic form."  At the time, mediums, seances, and other "spiritualist" practices were very popular, and this fit right in.

Much of Schneider's work has a religious aspect, like Es ist vollbracht (It is finished), 1895.  But even so, the painting manages to include a naked man, here as the devil.

Here is the cover of Karl May's book Am Rio de la Plata (On the Rio de la Plata), 1904.

This is the cover of Karl May's book Durchs Wilde Kurdistan (Through Wild Kurdistan), 1904.

This is the cover of the first in a popular series of books by Karl May, Winnetou I, 1904.  The title character, Winnetou, was an Apache warrior in the American Old West, and clearly neither of these figures is an Apache.  For that matter, I don't know if any of Schneider's book cover illustrations actually illustrated scenes from the books, but apparently author Karl May had no objection to them.  My guess is the naked covers helped sell more books.

This is the cover of Karl May's book Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen II (In the realm of the silver lion II), 1904-1905.

This is a non-commissioned work called Glut (Embers), 1904.  Yes, there's a naked woman in it, but also an abundance of naked men.

If there's any doubt as to what Schneider like to paint, look at this photo of him in his studio in 1906, surrounded by paintings of naked men.

Around this time, Sascha Schneider was blackmailed by an ex-lover who threatened to expose his homosexuality, which was illegal in Germany.  Schneider fled to Italy, where homosexuality was legal.  Eventually he returned to Germany.  Schneider was diabetic, and in 1927 he died from a diabetic seizure on a ship voyage.

To us, Schneider's work is so obviously homoerotic that it's hard to understand its popularity to the general public.  But the early 20th century was also the heyday of the German FKK (Freikörperkultur, or free body culture) movement, also known as the Health and Hygiene movement, which advocated a return to natural things, including healthy living, exercise, and nudity.  Schneider's nude male paintings were a perfect fit with FKK.  As a gay artist, he was in the right place at the right time.

Protests - Part 4

The Doukhobors

Naked protests are nothing new.  These are members of a Russian religious sect called the Doukhobors.  We won't get into their religious beliefs.  But they refused any cooperation with the government, refusing to register births and marriages, take oaths of allegiance, or serve in the military.  This group is protesting against military conscription in 1895.

More Russian Doukhabors protesting in 1895.  They used nudism as a form of protest.

In 1899, about 6,000 Doukhobors were allowed to emigrate to Canada.  But their beliefs were still at odds with the Canadian government.  These are Canadian Doukhobors protesting in the 1950s against having to take an oath of allegiance to Canada.

More Canadian Doukhobors protesting.

Here they are getting dressed after a protest. They weren't nudists; they just got naked for protests.

Doukhobors also used arson as a form of protest.  This photo was published in LIFE magazine, May 8, 1950.  In this case, Canadian Doukhobors protested by burning one of their own houses (and getting naked).

Another LIFE magazine photo of Doukhobor protesters at the 1950 burning.  However, a splinter group called the Sons of Freedom went too far and began burning things like public schools (they opposed compulsory education).  Confrontations continued into the 1970s.  The majority of Doukhobors rejected violence, however.  Today the Doukhobor sect is dying out as the younger generation is uninterested in the religion and the religious elders are dying off.

Events - Part 5

 Kumbh Mela

Kumbh Mela is a Hindu religious festival held every three years and rotating among four different sites in India, forming a twelve-year cycle.  It involves bathing in a holy river, but it is also a huge fair and entertainment spectacle.  The event is the world's largest gathering of religious pilgrims.  The Hindustani Times claimed that attendance for the nearly two-month-long festival in 2019 was 240 million.

The event is also a gathering of naga sadhus and naga babas, holy men who have renounced everything, including clothing.

These naked holy men, their bodies smeared with ashes, are everywhere at the festival.

This well-endowed guy, with a cowboy hat and sunglasses, looks less holy to me, but what do I know?

The penis is not only exposed by these men, it seems to be actively featured by many of them.  It is apparently considered a repository of sacred power.  This guy has a padlock in his penis.

The penis is also used as a demonstration of ascetic control by performing what we might call "dick tricks."  This holy man is winding his penis around a rod.  Others wind their penis around a sword blade (ouch).

This guy is taking it one step further.  Having wound his penis around a rod, he has an assistant climb up and stand on the rod.  Is all his weight being supported by the holy man's penis?  Not really.  His feet are pressed against the holy man's thighs, which are supporting his weight.  But it's a good trick.

But this dick trick doesn't seem to be faked.  This holy man is lifting a pile of bricks with his penis.

Finally, we have a procession of 36 naked holy men.  This isn't from Kumbh Mela, and they are not smeared with ash (an improvement, in my opinion), but it shows the reverence that the people have for these naked men.

College Athletes - Part 4

 Northwestern University Football

These photos of the Northwestern University football team in the locker room were taken in 1959 by LIFE photographer Robert W. Kelley.  None of these photos were published in the magazine.

We start with a player looking at a bulletin board in his jockstrap.

Another player in a jockstrap at his locker.

I'm not sure what that player at center left is wearing, but it's not much.

This photo has a dim frontal view that may or may not have been intended by the photographer.

We end with this naked guy who has climbed onto the bench, to the amusement of his friend on the left.  To make an announcement?  To show off?  Maybe both.

Poem of the Day - Part 8

In Just-spring
by e e cummings

in Just- 

spring          when the world is mud- 

luscious

(Photo: Louisiana rock festival, 1971, by LIFE photographer BillRay)

the little 

lame balloonman 

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come 

running from marbles and 

piracies and it's 

spring 

when the world is puddle-wonderful 

(video: Caleb & Jesse Fegan, Julia Creek, Queensland, Australia)

the queer 

old balloonman whistles 

far          and             wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing 

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and 

it's 

spring 

and 

         the 

                  goat-footed 

balloonMan          whistles 

far 

and 

wee

(Sitting Satyr by Todd Yeager, 2013)

Roman Emperors - Part 4

 Hadrian and Roman Gay Sex

Hadrian was emperor from 117 to 138 AD.  He is viewed as one of the good emperors.  He is probably best known as the builder of Hadrian's Wall at the northern edge of the Roman province of  Britannia (Britain).  Hadrian also consolidated the empire, abandoning Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), which he viewed as nothing but trouble, a decision that today strikes us as wise.  Among his many building projects was the Pantheon in Rome, the best-preserved ancient Roman building, whose concrete dome was the largest dome in the world for 1700 years until it was surpassed by modern iron and steel structures.

This is Hadrian portrayed as Mars, the god of war.  Note that he has a beard.  Previously, all emperors were clean-shaven.  Apparently Hadrian set a new style, because all the emperors for the next hundred years had beards, too.

(Statue of Hadrian, 117-125 AD, Capitoline Museums, Rome)

We can't talk about Hadrian without his lover, Antinous, a youth from Bithynia, a Greek-speaking province in what is now Turkey.  The Romans and Greeks did not have the concept of gay and straight.  It was perfectly acceptable for a man to have a wife (as Hadrian did, though the marriage was childless and apparently loveless) and also take a youth as a lover.  More about this below.

(Antinous, 130-138 AD, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark)

Antinous was clearly the love of Hadrian's life.  When Antinous drowned in the Nile during a visit to Egypt, Hadrian was distraught and ordered that a temple be built to Antinous as a god.

(Antinous, 130-140 AD, Altes Museum,  Berlin.  The snake is symbolic, indicating that the statue is a protective spirit.)

Hundreds of statues and busts of Antinous have survived.  This one, dating from 130-138 AD, is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Cheshire, England.

Another view of that same statue.  I'm guessing that Hadrian liked this view of Antinous.

We close with a few words about Roman same-sex practices.  This is the Warren Cup, a Roman silver drinking cup from c. 10 AD.  It depicts a bearded man fucking a beardless youth while someone, perhaps a servant, spies on them from behind a door.  Is this porn?  If so, it's very high-class porn.  The British Museum bought the Warren Cup in 1999 for £1.8 million ($2.9 million).

As I mentioned before, the Romans didn't have our concept of gay and straight.  They didn't even have words for homosexual and heterosexual.  A Roman man was free to engage in what we would call gay sex without reproach as long as (1) he was the top and (2) the bottom was his social inferior.  For the Romans, it wasn't about gay versus straight.  It was about who dominated whom.