Festivals - Part 22

 Roskilde 2009

Previously we saw the naked race held at the Roskilde Festival, a music festival held annually in Denmark.  But there's more to the festival than just the race.  I recently came across a trove of photos from a guy who had visited the festival in 2009.  Above, on the lakefront beach, are two of the participants in the race. 

There's more nudity at the festival than just the naked race.  A lot of people go skinny-dipping in the lake.

And some people just wander around the festival naked.  Here are some of them outside the festival's radio station.

Here's a Spanish guy (in the hat) and Lars, a friend of the photographer.

Here's Lars with the photographer and two young friends enjoying some Danish beer.

Here's a tattooed guy.  Even his dick is tattooed.

The tattooed guy and Lars dancing.  Yeah, I'm going to say they're dancing.

A guy with a banner "Mr. Klima (climate) 2009" has been painted with a water and fish design.

A rear view of Mr. Klima 2009.  I presume he's raising awareness of climate change, though I'm not quite sure what the fish have to do with it.

We end with a festival T-shirt.  "Good guys go to heaven.  Bad guys go to Roskilde."  I know which one I'd choose.

World Naked Bike Ride - Part 24

 San Francisco 2012

Here are a few of the guys who caught my eye from the 2012 WNBR in San Francisco.  This guy, in the lawn area where participants gather before the ride, is starting to paint himself.

And here he is continuing to paint, but wait!  Which of these two photos was taken first?  In the first photo, he hadn't painted his chest yet (so it must be first), but in this photo, he hadn't painted his leg yet (so it must be first).  Are we in a time warp?

This photo reveals the answer: in photo 1, he turned his leg so he painted the side of it, not visible in photo 2 but slightly visible here.

And he rides away.  There are many wild and wonderful things in San Francisco, but I'm afraid a time warp isn't one of them.

This guy also caught my eye with his red cap.  2012 was well before the Trump era, so the cap is not political.  Besides, something tells me he's not very conservative.

Of course, he has eye-catching attributes other than his cap.

Which someone else noticed and zoomed in for a closeup of them.

The third guy who caught my eye is standing with arms crossed, which is supposed to be a defensive posture, indicating a lack of confidence.

But then we see him with arms akimbo, which is supposed to show confidence or arrogance.  So which is it?

Maybe he just didn't know what to do with his hands while he was waiting for the ride to start.

The last guy who caught my eye is this rider with a bandana over his face.

This was before the COVID pandemic, so that's not why he's wearing it.  Maybe he wanted to stay anonymous (the dark glasses help with that, too).  So is he an ashamed male?

But he's exposing his body, and his nice overall tan (no tan lines) tells me that he regularly goes au naturel.  So I'm going to call him an unashamed mystery male.

Not the Same Old Song - Part 13

 Jump Then Fall

Part of Taylor Swift's song Jump Then Fall, accompanied by some video footage of guys jumping and falling.

Gods, Myths and Heroes - Part 15

Drunkenness of Noah

Those who think the Bible is the source of proper morality have never read it.  The Bible is full of stories of Biblical "heroes" engaging in awful behavior.  One of these has become known as the Drunkenness of Noah, which occurs after the story of Noah's Ark.

By the way, don't get me started on the story of Noah's Ark, which is one the most humungous lies ever told.

Anyway, according to Genesis 9:20-27, after the Ark landed, Noah got drunk and naked.  Noah's son Ham saw his father naked and told his two brothers.  His brothers covered up Noah without looking at him.  Noah then woke up and cursed Canaan, the son of Ham, into slavery, even though the whole thing was Noah's fault for getting drunk and naked, and Canaan had nothing to do with it.  What the hell?

For centuries, artists have illustrated this story, and since it revolves around Noah being naked, it was an excuse for the artists to show frontal male nudity.  Above is a mosaic in St. Mark's Cathedral, Venice, dating from the 12th or 13th century.

A medieval illustration by Bartolo di Fredi, 1367.  At first I was puzzled by who those other men in the background were, since at this point the entire population of the Earth (according to the Bible) would have been just Noah, his sons, and their wives.  Then I realized that, just like medieval artists had no concept of perspective, their concept of a picture was not a snapshot in time.  Instead, this picture mixes multiple time periods into one scene to tell a story: Noah's sons crush grapes to make wine, Noah drinks the wine, and the sons cover the drunken Noah.

Another medieval picture from a book in the British Library called the Biblia Pauperum, c. 1395-1400.  Note that Ham, at right, is pointing to Noah's nakedness.  The Church taught that Noah's curse was justified because Ham had ridiculed and shamed his father.  This is absolutely not supported by the Biblical text, which merely says that he told his brothers that Noah was naked.

What does this Biblical story teach us?

1. Nudity is shameful.

2. Seeing your father naked is unforgivable, even if it's totally his fault, not yours.

3. It's perfectly OK to condemn your innocent grandson into slavery.

Slaveowners cited this story to justify the institution of slavery.  So much for Biblical morality.

To emphasize how alien the morality of the Bible is, let's imagine if the same thing happened today.  A father gets drunk and is lying around naked.  His adult son finds him and says, "Uh, Dad, you might want to cover yourself."  The father says, "Oh, sorry," and covers himself.  End of story.

The Gates of Paradise are a set of bronze doors made by Lorenzo Ghiberti for the Baptistery in Florence from 1425 to 1452.  This scene from the doors depicts the drunkenness of Noah at left.  At the top, the pyramid thing is Noah's Ark.  Yes, a pyramid-shaped Ark.  Note the wild animals around its base.  What was Ghiberti smoking?

This is Michelangelo's painting of the drunkenness of Noah, 1509, part of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.  Michelangelo, who was gay, was fond of depicting nude males, so in this scene not only is Noah naked, but all his sons are as well.

Another Renaissance depiction of naked Noah by Moretto da Brescia, 1521-1528.

A bas-relief by Baccio Bandinelli, c. 1530, in the Bargello museum, Florence.  Again, everybody is naked, which kind of defeats the purpose of the story, but I'm not complaining.

After the Renaissance, when paintings became realistic depictions of a scene at a single point in time, the drunkenness of Noah remained a popular theme.  This is The Drunkenness of Noah by Carlo Saraceni, c. 1600-1610.

The Drunkenness of Noah by Bernardo Cavallino, 1640-1645.

The Drunkenness of Noah, by Andrea Sacchi, 18th century.  Ham, at right, seems to be telling us, "Hey look, he's naked."   Someone later painted some grapes over Noah's genitals, which was stupid, because if Noah isn't naked, there's no point to the story.  The painting was restored in 2010 by removing the grapes.

Drunkenness of Noah, facade of the City Hall, Leuven, Belgium.  Although the City Hall is medieval, the sculptures were added c. 1850.

Even modern artists have used the theme.  This is The Drunkenness of Noah II by James Gleeson, 1980.  The weird, partly inside-out bodies each seem to be sporting a dick and balls, though not necessarily attached at the normal place.

We close with The Drunkenness of Noah by Van Arno, 2000, in which Noah has a jug of moonshine whiskey, and he's seeing a pair of pink elephants.  The artist said he deliberately included two elephants because the animals in the Ark were in pairs.

I would only add that the Biblical story of Noah, like other Biblical stories, is as real as the pink elephants seen by a drunk.

Artists - Part 23

Koloman Moser

We saw three paintings by Koloman Moser in my previous post on the story of Siegfried.   Koloman 'Kolo' Moser (1868-1918) was an Austrian artist and designer.  Above is a self-portrait, 1916.

He was not just a painter.  He designed ceramics, glassware, jewelry, furniture (such as the chair above) and more.  He even designed postage stamps for the Austrian government.

He was a co-founder of the Vienna Secession, an art movement that was an offshoot of the Art Nouveau style.  Most of Koloman's graphic work is in the Art Nouveau style, with elaborate detail and exaggerated flowing lines.  That's not the style of this 1901 graphic, called "The Thousand Ravens," but I thought this was interesting because its interlocking shapes anticipate the tessellations of artist Maurits Escher 50 years later.

The style of Moser's paintings, however, remained clean and simple.  Although male nudes constitute a minority of his work, there were several of them.  Above, the figure in Feldeinsamkeit (Field Loneliness) 1912-1913, seems to be floating in the clouds.

Male nude, c. 1913.

Allegorie Jüngling, (Allegory young man) c. 1914.

This is a version of Der Wanderer, c. 1915.  We saw two other versions in my post on Siegfried, where at least one of them represented the god Wotan.

This composition is called Clash of the Titans, 1915.

This is Figure Study of Tristan, 1915  It's a preliminary sketch for his painting Tristan and Isolde, in which Tristan appears clothed but in the same pose.

Stehender Jüngling (Standing Youth), 1915.

Kolo Moser is still held in high regard by the Austrians.  In 2018, on the 100th anniversary of his death,  Austria issued this stamp featuring his painting Frühling (Spring).

College Streaking - Part 24

 Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin

We continue our un-coverage of the 1974 college streaking craze in alphabetical order by state (approximately).  I'm postponing Washington until next time because I have a lot of photos from Washington.

Above, University of Utah School of Medicine, from the 1974 yearbook Medicine Man.

University of Vermont, from the 1974 yearbook Ariel.

College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, from the 1974 yearbook Colonial Echo.

Christopher Newport College, Newport News, Virginia, March 18, 1974.

Madison College, Harrisonburg, Virginia, March 22, 1974.

Madison College, March 22, 1974.

Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia, from the 1974 yearbook The Chief Justice.

West Virginia Wesleyan College, from the 1974 yearbook Murmurontis.

University of Wisconsin, from the 1974 yearbook The Tower.

University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, March 5, 1974 (AP photo).