Artists dress as nude pandas for fundraising calendar

A Kickstarter? Please. It's all about the naked pandas. For its annual fundraising drive, Art F City looked to more creative means of getting donations. The New York-based art blog enlisted 12 artists – including Dazed favourite Molly Soda and GIF devotees Mike and Claire – to take off their clothes and pretend to be pandas for a glossy calendar. It is appropriately titled Nude Artists as Pandas. 

AFC founder and editor Paddy Johnson says that the idea came from the site's long-running, semi-jokey coverage of animal live cams ("we spent a good deal of time making GIFs from the Alaska bear cam this summer"), the Smithsonian's National Zoo pandacam in particular.

As for why the site decided to fuse their panda obsession with a pin-up calendar, Johnson says: "It came from the place of all good ideas: party banter! A friend of mine outside of the art world was following our panda cam and thought this might be funny. One year later, we're doing it!"

Johnson adds that finding the right subjects posed a slight challenge. "I wouldn't have felt right if I had to convince anyone to pose nude as a panda, but there were certainly people we asked who declined," he says. "One artist, for example, was an elementary school teacher, and was concerned that someone might see the pictures and conclude that he was not a good hire."

"Others, wanted to participate, but would only do so if they could pose with their clothes on. Since this is styled a bit like a pin up calendar, I passed on some of those artists."

Thank god he did. Let's face it, the calendar wouldn't be the same without its goofy, semi-innocent nudity. (And the panda hats.)

New York artist Rachel Stern, who is no stranger to elaborately surreal photographic tableaus, snapped the images. For $50, you can grab a copy of the calendar. $250 nets you a calendar and a photographic print of a calendar image. 

You can find out more information about Nude Artists as Pandas here.