Originally published on Culture Critic. What was the worst year in human history? To answer that, we first have to ask how you even define what constitutes the “worst.” Is it the loss of life, or the scale of suffering? Or is it a different kind of damage altogether? The …

Originally published on Culture Critic The gap between medieval and modern art might seem unbridgeable. But there is one painting that connects the two — and it’s as strange as you might expect. Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights is more than a visual masterpiece. It holds the keys to some big questions: …