Most people are usually a bit confused when they look at Belgian artist René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images for the first time. The painting is of a simple smoking pipe with the phrase “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (”This is not a pipe”) written below it. (more…)

Downtown Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, now the tallest building in the world, briefly opened in January with a stunning celebration. In photographs, the building’s inauguration, replete with fireworks and video projections (more…)

It is fitting that one of the most recognizable symbols, images, of jazz, is the headshot of the High Priest himself, hunched over his piano keys smiling, singing Epistrophy or Round Midnight. Thelonious Sphere Monk captivated, but sometimes personal situations and most of all his high regard for originality (more…)

Frank Gehry is known for his easily identifiable style: big, swooping titanium and glass forms that seem to float like sails on the wind or the skirts of a dancer. Some compare his architecture to Disneyland, larger than life and a bit too whimsical (more…)

In the vernacular of furniture, the chair is the apparatus that forms the intimate bond between the individual and the room, as the great architect and designer Eero Saarinen no doubt observed. A chair may only be empty space until someone sits in it (more…)

“I am not complete”, says Edward in Tim Burton’s movie Edward Scissorshands. This quote captures the essence of most of Burton’s characters. (more…)

If you don’t own a pair yourself, you probably know someone who does. That probably has something to do with the fact that over 750 million have been sold. Their look is unmistakable: a simplistic combination of cheap canvas and rubber (more…)

New York is a city of islands: Manhattan, Roosevelt, Governors and Staten, not to mention Long Island, which is anchored on the west end by Queens and Brooklyn. In fact, the Bronx is the only borough attached to the mainland. (more…)

Setting up an easel at concerts and inviting people to watch as you paint (or sculpt, or arrange flowers, or whatever art form you do that is more typically hidden from prospective audiences) is…different. (more…)

Thousands of years ago, in a fertile plain somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the descendants of an ark builder looked into each other’s eyes and then up towards the heavens. (more…)