Edvard Munch's Male Nudes

Most people know Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) from The Scream (1893), the expressionistic portrait of an agonized figure under an orange sky.  When I was in West Hollywood, you could get Scream t-shirts, masks, and blow-up dolls.

But Munch had a long career in Paris of the Belle Epoque, Berlin, and Kristiania (now Oslo).  He experimented with many styles, and produced a huge opus.

Including many male nudes.

Men in the Sea (1908).

He painted female nudes, too, but the homoerotic power behind his nude male groups is undeniable.

Men in a Swimming Pool (1923)

Munch never married or established any long-term relationship that we know of, and was plagued by alcoholism and mental illness throughout his life.  A few months after completing his monumental "Ages of Man" (1907-08), which depicts 12 naked men on the beach, he attempted suicide and was admitted to a "nerve clinic."

Sounds like a tortured, closeted gay man of the era of Krafft-Ebing and Hirschfeld.

The Top 10 Hunks of "Spartacus"

Spartacus (111-71 BC) was a gladiator who led a slave revolution that threatened the Roman Republic.  Although there's no evidence that he was fighting against slavery as an institution, he's been portrayed as a freedom fighter ever since.

And as a muscleman on a par with Hercules.

Here are the top screen hunks who put their biceps to work at Spartacus.

1. Mario Ausonia played Spartaco in a 1913 Italian silent version.

2. Kirk Douglas became the iconic Spartacus in the 1960 version, with Sir Laurence Olivier as Crassus, and the famous "oysters/snails" gay reference.

3. John Heston (Giovanni di Benedetto) starred in the peplum Spartacus and the Ten Gladiators (1964).

4. In 1970, the British spoof Up Pompeii!  had an episode with a slave uprising led by Spartacus (Shaun Curry, not shown).

5. Goran Visnijic played a rather less than buffed version in a 2004 tv movie.

More after the break.