FREE love, drugs, alcohol, amazing artworks and philanthropic ideals are all part of the Burning Man Festival, which ends today in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

About 70,000 people have flocked to the temporary metropolis this year for the event that is described as an experiment in community and art.

This year’s art theme was inspired by the Italian Renaissance of the middle 15th and early 16th centuries, when a historic convergence of inspired artistry, technical innovation and enlightened patronage launched Europe out of medievalism and into modernity.

Symbolising the theme was the giant effigy burned on Saturday night designed in tribute to Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. An elaborate system of human-powered gears and pulleys slowly rotated the Burning Man a full 360 degrees before an ecstatic crowd that had to endure a desert dust storm earlier in the week.

It was a satisfying moment for organiser Larry Harvey, who started the festival on a San Francisco beach back in 1986 when the first Burning Man was set alight.

Since then the festival has been built on ten principles including civic responsibility, community co-operation, gifting, self-expression and self-reliance.

WHERE IS ALL THE LOVE?

WHILE the festival was built on lofty principles, critics dismiss it as a hedonistic orgy, pointing to the helicopters that fly in celebrities and various rich kids as evidence that it has not managed to reject commercial culture or promote the idea of a sharing economy.

Paris Hilton, Cara Delevingne and her big sister Poppy were some of the celebrities spotted this year and the Orgy Dome was there once more, giving grist to the mill of the sceptics.

The Orgy Dome promotes the old hippy idea of free love but participants are carefully vetted to make sure they know what they are letting themselves in for, with consent being key.

Run by a group called And Then There’s Only Love, the huge tent is advertised as a “sex-positive, consensual space for couples and moresomes to play.” All sexual orientations are welcomed to take part in the activities within the giant tent. Inside there are sofas, mattresses, massage tables, condoms, lubricants and classes such as group erotic massage and sadomasochism.

One participant said afterwards: “I didn’t realise there was such a process to getting in. We were interviewed to make sure we were sober enough to consent and that we understood all the rules.”

WHAT ABOUT THE ART?

THE Orgy Dome always attracts a fair bit of media attention but the festival is still mainly about the art. This year, true to the Renaissance theme, engineering technology and art were intertwined to create some amazing works dotted around the desert. Fabulous though they are, they will be gone by the end of the week with just the dust, sand and scrub of the desert left behind.

Parasolvent by Dan Benedict pays tribute to da Vinci with a disembodied suit at the bottom of a Ferris wheel that has umbrellas instead of carriages on its outside rim. Festival goers are invited to turn a huge crank that sets the wheel in motion and makes the umbrellas go between the shoulders of the suit.

Two huge binders with pages listing all the black citizens killed by the police in the US this year is an installation from Que Viva, while Black Rock Lighthouse Service allows participants to climb up six precarious “lighthouse” towers linked by very rickety-looking suspension bridges. The structure is due to be set alight at the end of the festival.

There are also massive pyramids made of wood rearing up out of the desert sand and equally impressive is the Balloon Chain, a light installation that wafts above the desert every evening. It is made from balloons filled with LED lights attached to 1000ft of fishing line, and floats up far enough into the sky to be visible for miles.

Similarly, Firmament by Christopher Schardt is 21,600 lights in a canopy net that sways to classical music.

ANYTHING ELSE?

LORD Snort, a 20ft tall and 37ft long wild boar made from rusty metal, is a favourite with festivalgoers this year. Made by Bryan Tedrick, from California, it is rough, unbreakable and people can climb all over it.

There are plenty of other animal artworks to keep Lord Snort company. The giant weta is an endangered New Zealand species and to draw attention to this a group of artists from Auckland have created a 50:1 scale model of one that shoots flames. It is to be preserved as a permanent installation in New Zealand.

There is also Jack Champion’s Murder, an installation of five big black crows that looks like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock film. More comforting is the white elephant sculpture by artist Scott London, or a travelling octopus art car called El Pulpo Mechanical that rolls about to music, spouting flames.

Octavius is a giant octopus covered in a bright mosaic of hand-cut ceramic tiles in shades of orange, blue, and purple. The eyes and suckers are glass, and glow with the light of hundreds of LED bulbs, supposedly symbolising enlightenment from within.

Or there is the Space Whale, a 50-foot full-scale humpback whale mother and calf built from steel and stained glass. It is meant to inspire people to create the change needed for a future of “space travel and environmental balance”.