Rather than depicting a specific location, Ensor offers a telling amalgam and carnivalesque inversion of an entire genre that, as articulated by the French poet Charles Baudelaire, celebrated the spectacle of modern urban life.

WSJ: A Macabre Kingdom of Masks | James Ensor | Christ's Entry Into Brussels in 1889 | By Mary Tompkins Lewis

His last big project was a Utopian community in Florida, in which he tried to use technology to rid modern life of its concomitant ills, notably urban sprawl and intrusive motor cars.

ECONOMIST: America��s sorcerer

From its treehouse perspective, modern-day archaeologists and architecture enthusiasts can take in rooftop gardens, slices of gritty urban life and views of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.

BBC: New York��s floating freight line

With such diverse sound effects and samples as frogs croaking, children playing, side walk preachers preaching, and a New York subway door closing, The Education of the Individual Soul is tied to both nature and to everyday urban life, giving it the qualities of a sort of ethereal and mystical modern-day fairytale.

NPR: East Forest: 'Pacific Coast Highway'

For anyone numbed by the impersonal nature of modern Chinese apartment blocks or the frenzied pace of urban China, the earth buildings are enchanting reminders of communal village life and the ancient rhythms of the agrarian southeast.

BBC: The Hakka earth buildings of Fujian