As he plans to celebrate his 80th birthday in his native Colombia this week, painter and sculptor Fernando Botero says the idea of retiring his paintbrush frightens him even more than death.
More than 3,000 paintings and 300 sculptures are still not enough for one of the world's most famous living artists, who recently displayed his latest exhibition entitled "Viacrucis," dedicated to the Stations of the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Full StoryEvery week using mainly his hands but also armed with scissors, a knife and scalpel, Joao Teixeira de Faria, a self-styled Brazilian medium and "psychic surgeon," treats thousands of sick people who claim to be cured.
Among those who have sought the services of the healer known as "John of God" has been none other than Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the popular Brazilian ex-president, now said to be in remission from larynx cancer.
Full Story'Nixon in China', an opera inspired by the first visit to Beijing by a U.S. president, gets a facelift this month in Paris at the hands of Chinese-born director Cheng Shi-Zheng, who still remembers the 1972 trip as the first time he ever saw the picture of an American.
The new production, on stage at the Chatelet Theatre in Paris to April 18, comes on the 40th anniversary of the politically ground-breaking visit which opened Red China to the West, and on the 25th anniversary of the creation of the opera, written by U.S. composer John Adams.
Full StoryAt sea and on land Sunday, wreaths were cast, memorials unveiled and people stood in silence to remember the 1,500 people who died in the sinking of the Titanic ocean liner a century ago.
In Belfast, the city that built the Titanic, a memorial garden containing the first-ever monument to list all the victims' names was unveiled during a commemorative service attended by about 300 members of the public.
Full StoryWaxworks museum Madame Tussauds opened a branch in Sydney on Monday with Australian personalities Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman sharing the stage with Barack Obama and Lady Gaga.
The world-famous London attraction set up shop in tourist precinct Darling Harbor after 56,000 hours of work creating the 70 figures on display.
Full StoryElla Fitzgerald has given concerts there. So have Sarah Vaughn, Aretha Franklin, Duke Ellington, James Brown, and Miles Davis.
The Howard Theatre, the first concert hall for blacks, is reborn this week from its ashes, more than a century after it opened in Washington DC.
Full StoryThousands of Christian pilgrims are gathering in Jerusalem for an ancient fire ritual that celebrates Jesus' resurrection.
They have crowded Saturday into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where many Christian traditions hold that Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected.
Full StoryChaos and man's attempts to tame it are at the heart of a spectacular new show at Paris' museum of tribal arts that pits voodoo and shamanic artifacts alongside the work of contemporary artists.
By the entrance to the show stands a voodoo talisman meant to ward off evil spirits -- a colorful female statue with a calabash at its center, and covered with grasses, fabric, palm oil and scraps of animal horn.
Full StoryTibetan herder Gatou used to live a nomadic life on the grasslands of the Tibetan plateau before he was rehoused under a controversial Chinese government scheme.
Now he inhabits one of scores of small brick houses that have sprung up in incongruously neat rows in the rugged and mountainous terrain of the Guoluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in northwest China.
Full StoryHis LSD-inspired heroes, rampant sex and frontal assaults on political correctness made comic artist Robert Crumb an icon of U.S. counter-culture, but why on earth, he wonders, put his work on show in a museum?
Crumb's cult universe, from hippy-era characters like "Fritz the Cat" to his cartoon take on the Bible, is on show -- uncensored -- until August at Paris' Museum of Modern Art, hosting the largest-ever retrospective of his work.
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