Spencer Tunick Is One Weird Dude

Cristo, the avant garde artist who first arrived on the scene a generation ago was into covering the earth, literally. If he could have, he would have wrapped huge sheets of cloth around Mt. Everest. But he.settled for wrapping some buildings and hanging sheets across an entire valley somewhere. He floated a bunch of huge golf umbrellas upside down on a Japanese river, and hung curtains from trees in Central Park.  I know, a picture would help.

Anyway, this Spencer Tunick guy, the one I think is weird, is the one that gets people to strip off their clothes and lie down nude in traffic so he can take pictures. He used to have to snap his photos quickly since the cops would come and arrest people who didn't escape fast enough.

That was before he'd done his thing so many times in so many places that it was elevated from indecent exposure to artistic expression.

I guess his biggest group of naked folks was 7000 until recently. With this last photo shoot in Mexico City, he's up to 17,500 people letting it all hang out.

In the name of art.

I don't think so.

Tell me he's not just a voyeur who found a way to get perfect strangers to strip for him and let him watch. But he doesn't stop there. After they remove their clothes, his subjects let him take pictures of their naked bodies assuming whatever poses he requests.

That's a porn perv's wet dream. A Peeping Tom's titillation.

While I think the participants have been duped into participating in Mr. Tunick's strange sexual fantasy -- one that he is trying to pass off as art -- you have to admire his chutzpah. He's giving the rest of us a master class in charisma and mind control.

Jim Jones would have been proud.