It took Michelangelo four years to create his masterpiece murals that cover the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. A Manhattan artist believes he can recreate the soaring images in just two months on the ceiling of his cramped studio apartment.  Alex Gardega is a NYC based artist with an international following. His media of choice: oil painting, watercolors and glass.

"My whole life I've been obsessed with the Sistine Chapel," Alex Gardega said before climbing a ladder to paint the first lines.  "This will be an exact copy."  Gardega, 43, has helped beautify the city, creating murals and glass works for churches and historic buildings. He also has done drawings for celebrities like actors Matt Dillon and Drew Barrymore.  But his own apartment has been long neglected.  "I get paid a lot to make people's environments nice, and my own looks like a mess," he said.  Holding a photo of the chapel ceiling for reference against his palette of oil paints, Gardega painted the outline of the iconic Creation of Adam image over his bed in an hour.

The crème de la crème of Rio's samba schools paraded at the Sambódromo on Sunday, February 19th, and Monday, February 20th in the uniquely famous competition in front of 90,000 jubilant spectators and hundreds of millions television viewers across the world. The Unidos da Tijuca samba school was declared the winner of the 2012 Rio Carnival, with its tribute to the late singer and composer Louis Gonzaga, the "king of Baiao", a popular music style from Brazil's northeast.  Unidos da Tijuca, sporting blue and yellow colors and renowned for its creative and innovative artistic work won the tile  for the third time in its 81-year history.

English speakers get their moment in the Carnival sun on Monday February 20, 2012 as a  Beatles-themed street party shakes it up with a samba swing to "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da."   "Sergeant Pepper," is one of more than 400 raucous street parties that spring up throughout Rio de Janeiro during Carnival season. Hundreds of thousands of people turn out for the largest of the "blocos," packed, sweaty open-air dance parties where the crowd sings along to a repetitive medley of Carnival songs. 

The London 2012 Cultural and Arts Events countdown includes a unique exhibit of Lucian Freud (Februatry 9 - May 27, 2012) at the National Portrait Gallery in London.   "Lucian Freud Portraits" exhibit explores the artist's work from the early 1940s to his death in July 2011.

Displayed chronologically throughout the National Portrait Gallery's ground floor, the exhibition includes nine sections ranging from those devoted to the earliest portraits right through to the late work, as well as major portraits of key muses such as Bowery, his mother and family.  The exhibition highlights the recurring importance of the self-portrait in Freud's work.   The London 2012 Cultural Olympiad is the largest cultural celebration in the history of the modern Olympic movements and it is designed to give everyone in the UK a chance to be part of London 2012.

Click here to meet the London Mascots and Play Games

This $4.3 Million Andreas Gursky Photograph Became the Most Expensive Ever Sold at Auction on November 9, 2011 at Christie's in London.

Rhein II

"Rhein II", a photograph of the Rhine River by Andreas Gursky, was sold for $4.3 million at Christie's, breaking Cindy Sherman's previous record of $3.89 million, set in May. A Roy Lichtenstein record was broken too, with a single work going for $43.2 million."As actor Leonardo DiCaprio looked on in blue jeans and blue baseball cap, the pop artist's 'I Can See the Whole Room!... And There's Nobody in It!' helped London-based Christie's reach a total of $247.6 million."

For more than 150 years, the Big Ben has been a national symbol for the United Kingdom and London, particularly in the visual media. When a television or film-maker wishes to indicate a generic location in Britain, a popular way to do so is to show an image of the Clock Tower, often with a red double-decker bus or black cab in the foreground.