Volunteers strip naked for Spencer Tunick's 'Ring' cycle project Several hundred nude people assembled in downtown Munich over the weekend for American artist Spencer Tunick's installation dedicated to the "Ring" cycle by Richard Wagner. Lukas Barth / Associated Press / June 24, 2012 June 25, 2012, 7:00 a.m. Hundreds of people stripped naked in a Munich, Germany, public square over the weekend for the latest installation by Spencer Tunick, the American photographer who specializes in assembling large numbers of naked bodies for his conceptual projects. Saturday's event was a tribute to Richard Wagner's "Ring" cycle of operas, which are being performed by the Bavarian State Opera. A reported 1,700 people took off their clothes for the project, with about half of the participants painted in gold and the remainder painted in red. The volunteers arranged themselves in various configurations -- including a pair of concentric red-and-gold rings -- that were intended to be Tunick's visual interpretations of scenes from the "Ring." Tunick has traveled the world staging his nudity-themed photography projects, including recent visits to the Dead Sea in Israel and the Sydney Opera House in Australia. His images aren't meant to be sexually arousing, but rather are intended "to challenge or reconfigure one's views of nudity and privacy," the artist writes on his website. Australian museum holding naked art tours For France's Marianne, big breasts aren't always better Larry Clark still causing trouble with racy photography exhibition