Punk Smurf pens a bilingual blog

Autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire draws 18-foot mural of New York City from memory after 20 minute helicopter ride.

Looking for a cheap way to refurnish your apartment shelling out big bucks for new bean bag chairs or a few freshly woven macrame plant holders? Charlie Kratzer might have just the answer. The 53-year-old used $10 worth of Sharpies and magic markers to turn his boring cream-colored basement into a wonderous work of fine art featuring dipictions of George Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Blenheim Palace, the Cornell Law School - where Kratzer received his JD - as well as William Shakespeare, The Marx Brothers, Kratzer’s dad, Star Wars’ R2D2, Rocky and Bullwinkle, and Sherlock Holmes. 

Kratzer began the project mid-wall with The Salon by Picasso. Soon he’d covered the entire basement. Kratzer chose his subjects - from Winston Churchill to Joan Crawford - based on his love literature, art, and popular culture. It just goes to show - perhaps more appropriate than ever in these rough economic times - that a lot can be done with little more than a few bucks, a bit of creativity, a few obsessions, and your own two hands. 

To see a cool 360-degree view of Kratzer’s basement click here.

(AP) Dutch detectives have recovered five 17th-century paintings, including a Jan Steen, more than six years after they were snatched from the Frans Hals Museum, the museum and police said Tuesday.

The paintings include Steen’s “Charlatan on the Market,” as well as works by Cornelis Bega, Adriaan van Ostade and Cornelis Dusart, police said in a statement.

Museum spokesman Louis Pirenne said three of the works had been damaged, but all would be exhibited from Wednesday at the museum in Haarlem, just west of Amsterdam. The works were done by artists from a movement that aimed to depict daily Dutch life in the 1600s, often with a moral message.

Steen’s “Charlatan on the Market” portrays a quack doctor selling medicines of dubious value to naive market-goers. Of two paintings by Van Ostade, one titled “The Contented Drinker” is considered the greatest masterpiece of the five. The other Van Ostade is also titled “Charlatan on the Market.”

At the time of the theft the paintings were insured for a total of US$4.3 million, though Pirenne said their historical importance made their value “impossible to express in euros.”

After they were stolen, museum staff said the paintings would be impossible to sell on the open market because they were too well-known and documented.

Two Den Bosch men, aged 23 and 69, were arrested Saturday at a hotel in Eindhoven and another, aged 54, was arrested close to his home in Den Bosch, police said. Their identities were not released, in line with Dutch privacy laws.

All three are being held on suspicion of receiving the stolen paintings.

Police said they seized cars, including a Ferrari, a Maserati, and a Range Rover, at one of the houses along with handguns, body armor, designer watches, drugs and an undisclosed amount of cash.

I heard on the radio that one of the men is a well known lawyer (did he supply all the legal knowledge?) and that they met up on parking lots of a Dutch equivalent of Applebee’s. Now imagine driving onto an IHOP parking lot, or somewhere, in a Maserati. Like that isn’t going to attract any attention. Trust me; it does over here.