Undaunted, Vallayer-Coster kept working, and when the monarchy was restored she presented the new king with a painting of boiled red lobster as a welcoming gift.

Six sheets of paper, delicately colored across the spectrum from yellow-orange to blue-violet (so delicately that you may hardly notice the color shift), rest on shelves whose shadows on the wall, each slightly different because of the different angles to the overhead lights, seem as much the substance of the work as are the colored sheets of paper.

He takes colored neon signs and turns them into hanging abstract sculptures.

To get a feel for what Baghdad and Manhattan might look like after a nuclear assault, visit this little chiller of a photography show.

This includes a scene of Keystone Kop-style sex and a sadistically staged fashion shoot in front of a photo of the Columbine High School massacre.

In another, a group of men in business suits converse, among them a vaguely George Bush look-alike holding a big pink fish like a trophy.

As her latest attempts descend into literary obscurity and visual incoherence, they serve as sharp reminders that artistic intelligence is one thing and disciplined self-criticism is another.

"Larry" is Larry King, the talk show host, of whom Mr. Bozhkov made a huge portrait in a hayfield in Maine.

The four paintings project a full-frontal ugliness.

A darling of the contemporary British art scene, Michael Craig-Martin won fame in the 1970's with his creation of a glass three-quarters full of water placed on a high shelf, which he declared to be "An Oak Tree."

The vivacious images here were inspired by the book "Shallow Water Dictionary: A Grounding in Estuary English" by John R. Stilgoe, a treatise on the descriptive language of estuaries, the ecologically important coastal waters that mingle with those of the sea.

She photographed the four ancient elements — earth, air, fire and water — in microcosm, designating as earth, for example, a photograph of grapes fermenting in a petri dish that looks like the fiery bowels of a volcano.