And dodging catlike through all of the disarray, veritable squadrons of fragile-looking sky-caiques took off and landed at all angles with open decks burdened by cargo bound for riotously colored, tented bazaars that topped the age-blackened stone walls of the canal.

For there are no arches shaped like keyholes and horseshoes here, no walls that glisten with riotously colored tiles or bristle with sinuously organic calligraphy.

Geertz's book-lined office, its sterile white walls decorated with toothy, riotously colored Javanese masks, suggests a tense, unresolved yoking of opposites.

He produces teeming, riotously colored cartoons of metropolitan life and affectionately satiric portraits of artists from Courbet to Pollock to Chuck Berry.

"To give up butter and cream and make things taste exciting, that's a challenge," he said recently as he and his chef de cuisine, Morgen Jacobson, discussed the infinite variety of riotously colored, stunningly intense sauces they are creating with slow-cooked vegetable stocks and purees.

With the help of his students, local art teacher Francisco Mendoza riotously colored the walls with religious and cultural imagery.

Mr. Hodgkin paints elliptically and with an exactitude and patience belied by the carefree impression that his riotously colored paintings at first create.

He looks fearsome in his riotously colored robes and face paint, one of many captivating costumes by Anita Yavich.

Gigantic butterflies, riotously colored, fluttered overhead through the misty haze.

Moths with riotously colored wings of 30-foot spread beat the air with mighty strokes, huge eyes glowing like carbuncles as they stared with frenzied, intoxicated devotion into the flames below.