(Naked male bodies, some with full frontal nudity, but in fine art, so exempt from the WordPress ban on naughty bits — but still not suitable for kids or the sexually modest)
A 1977 linocut print by German graphic artist Roland Rudolf Berger, encountered on Pinterest yesterday, shows us Mid-August Man:
(#1) Berger’s Sommer (Summer)
According to Wikidata, Berger (born in 1942) is a German graphic artist whose work incorporates gay themes; his specialty is linocut prints made in his studio in Berlin. That’s pretty much all I’ve been able to discover about him, though art auction sites seem to do a profitable business in his prints.
What to do in mid-August: Berger at the beach. Now, three Mid-August Men (cavorting naked at the beach) from Berger, plus an inscrutable couple — a naked guy greeting a clothed one, possibly also at the beach (though the setting is unclear):
(#2) Berger’s Three at the Beach, 1983: three male nude figures on a beach — the first reading; the second immersed in thought while striding along the beach; the third observing the second and musing about him
(#3) Berger’s Guten Tag David, date unclear
(You’ll see that you can achieve a variety of styles in a b&w linocut print)
What to do in mid-August: celebrate Ferragosto, at cultural locales or by / in water. From my posting yesterday, “The Emperor’s August festival”, on the holiday of Ferragosto (celebrated on August 15th in Italy):
This festivity was used by Benito Mussolini to give the lower classes the possibility to visit cultural cities [or more generally, cultural sites, like museums, zoos, sculpture parks, and gardens] or go to the seaside for one to three days, from 14 August to the 16th, by creating “holiday trains” with extremely low cost tickets, for this holiday period [or you could swim in lakes, rivers, or pools — in any case, go to the water].
… the middle of August could use an official R&R holiday for those of us outside Italy. Along these lines, my caregiver León gave me [a] visit to Palo Alto’s Gamble Garden … : a giant festival of food plants and herbs
Apples, figs, grapes, artichokes, corn, squashes, tomatoes of several sorts, rhubarb, strawberries, greens, lots of culinary herbs, and more.
The mid-August garden tour. Yesterday’s just reported on. And then, from my 8/24/19 posting “GG on an August morning”, about a group of lgbtq + friendly folks on a Gamble Garden tour on 8/17 of that year and what they found there, including legumes, labiates, and a remarkable legume tree, the cockspur / cockscomb coral tree (Erythrina crista-galli).
On the tree, see my 6/14/17 posting “Three garden ornamentals and two trees”, which has a section on the cockspur coral tree, with photos. It’s the national tree of Argentina (ceibo in Spanish), and its flower is the national flower of Argentina and Uruguay:
(#4) Coral tree flowers
Go to the water in mid-August. Then there’s the water option. On the beach, as in Berger’s #2. Or to whatever water’s available, as in this raunchy July page from the 2024 Tom of Finland calendar, which would have served well for August:
(#5) Water play for Mid-August Men
Leave a Reply