One day in 1871, legend has it, a French artist named Claude Monet walked into a food shop in Amsterdam, where he had gone to escape the Prussian siege of Paris. There he spotted some Japanese prints being used as wrapping paper. He was so taken by the engravings that he bought one on the spot. The purchase changed his life — and the history of Western art. Monet went on to collect 231 Japanese prints, which greatly influenced his work ...

Laura Pizzuto, 78, of Seattle admits she loses her words every now and then. An avid gardener, she will sometimes forget the name of a familiar plant. "But I know how to look things up," she says. "Or I can go to the library or call a friend." Occasional memory lapses are not going to slow down this professional artist. "I want to keep myself going so I can work and enjoy my grandchildren," she says. To that end, Pizzuto ...

A smudged fingerprint has convinced art experts that a painting thought to have dated back to the early 19th century is the work of revered Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Little is known of the painting before it appeared in an illustrated Christie's catalogue in the late 1990s labeled as "German, 19th Century" under the name of "Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress." It sold for $19,000 at the auction to respected New York art dealer Kate Ganz who ...

Six people were sentenced to death for murder and other crimes in riots that killed about 200 people in western China, state media reported Monday. The southern California artist rode the waves in Indonesia, India and Morocco, and on dry land, his curiosity piqued about the religion practiced there. He visited mosques and eventually, acquired a translated copy of the Quran, Islam's holy book. Then came the chilling attacks of September 11, 2001, and Birk realized that Americans knew very ...

While several high-profile actors and directors have rallied around Roman Polanski, not everyone in Hollywood believes he should be freed and forgiven. In the face of a petition signed by notables such as Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and John Landis calling for the immediate release of Polanski following his detainment in Switzerland, a backlash is building against such support. "I can't believe that Hollywood has separated itself so completely from American morality," said Paul Petersen, a former child actor ...

The owner of a taxidermy school in Blanco, Texas, says he's been receiving more phone calls and attention than he'd like over the identity of a dead roughly 30-pound, mostly hairless coyote-like creature. "I don't know what it is. ... I do know that I have an odd animal," Jerry Ayer said Thursday. He said word spread quickly that he was in possession of an unknown animal -- often speculated in his region to be chupacabras, or mythical creatures, he ...

The art of portraiture, once reserved for the rich, the royal and the holy, has found a new mass appeal online. Some avid social-network users are commissioning artists to create small digital images to represent themselves in the online world. Other Internet-savvy people use automated computer programs and Web sites to generate posterized likenesses of themselves. Matt Held, a 38-year-old painter in Brooklyn, New York, has gained Internet celebrity for painting peoples' Facebook photos and then giving them to his ...

A rarely seen portrait of Michael Jackson is on display inside a Harlem luxury car dealership. Macky Dancy, a partner at Dancy-Power Automotive, said the oil painting titled "The Book" is believed to be the only portrait for which Jackson sat. A different portrait of the entertainer was among items auctioned from his Neverland Ranch in April. It is not clear whether Jackson sat for that painting. The painting on display in Harlem belongs to Marty Abrams, a friend and ...

As a scrawny 11-year-old from Gary, Indiana in child-sized bellbottoms and a radiant smile, Michael Jackson first stepped onto the scene at age 11 as part of the unforgettable Jackson 5. The Motown group, one of the biggest pop acts of the 1970s, was made up of Jackson and his four brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine , and Marlon The Jackson 5 were introduced to the public by Diana Ross on August 11, 1968, in a performance at a ...

If an e-mail popped up in your inbox promising a house for $100, you'd expect to see it sent from a guy in Nigeria asking you to wire him several thousand dollars first. But this depressed housing market dream is real. And Detroit, Michigan, artist Jon Brumit and his wife Sarah are living it. The couple never counted on owning a home. "It's not that we have a little money," Jon Brumit said, laughing. "I'm saying we have no ...