High Culture
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The Rijksmuseum employed an AI to repaint lost parts of Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch.” Here’s how they did it.
Tim Brinkhof is a Dutch-born, New York-based journalist reporting on art, history, and literature. He studied early Netherlandish painting and Slavic literature at New York University, worked as an editorial[…]
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Many of his criticisms ring true today.
Hit shows are like societal mirrors, capable of reflecting the cultural zeitgeist whose likeness they try to record.
The singer-songwriter distilled the essence of the holidays into a hit song, and for her efforts she was crowned the Queen of Christmas.
What value does wit hold in genres defined by brute strength?
Released in 1972, "Ways of Seeing" has proven to be as worthy of study as the artistic traditions it investigates.
Although equal parts Hollywood blockbuster and Putinist propaganda, "Trotsky" still manages to capture the good, the bad, and the ugly of Russia’s revolutionary past.
By taking Satan out of the religious context, storytellers explored the nature of sin in new ways.
The German thinker wrote both treatises and songs. He approached each form of expression with the same level of interest.
Winner takes all, losers die, and participants have no choice but to play.
According to literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, Dostoevsky's talents were on par with those of William Shakespeare.
Before Herbert came along and wrote Dune, few if any sci-fi stories were set in fully realized universes.
Growing up in the United States, I remember on Halloween my mother used to say, “Honey, this is not just a day for costumes and candy. You must also remember […]
Frank Herbert's "Dune" refers to a religious desert people who are desperate for a savior to overthrow an evil empire. Sound familiar?
Fear is one of the oldest and most powerful emotions known to man, so it should come as no surprise that horror stories are as old as storytelling itself.
Today, alcohol is as important as candy to the Halloween economy.
One of the scariest films of the 1970s didn't set out to be a horror film at all.
The more horror we consume, the harder it becomes to find a good scare. These genuinely unsettling movies should get you in the mood for Halloween.
Haunting photographs depict the dead as "still with us."
Music is often labelled a “universal language,” and according to the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, there is a good reason for that.
Societal breakdown, whether real or imagined, can lead to dramatic responses — like blood-sucking vampires.
In hell, we assume a position of moral superiority, looking down over the sinners and the poor decisions that led them to this wretched place. In heaven, Dante is looking down upon us.
Portraiture is one of the most intimate genres in all of painting, and it has reinvented itself many times across European history.
Studio Ghibli movies celebrate the natural world using a very Japanese mixture of Shinto, Buddhist, and Daoist themes.
Computer Space lacked a critical ingredient that the other games possessed: gravity.
The "Foundation" series, recently adapted into a show by Apple TV, was inspired by a fascinating, real-life academic discipline.
The Swedish Academy honored the writer for his uncompromising inquiry into the lasting consequences of Africa’s colonization.
Yukio Mishima treated his life as if it were a story — one with a surprising and deadly final act.
Bolsheviks planned to erect a towering monument to the socialist cause, but their quixotic ideas never got off the ground.
Although the statue’s political connotations faded over time, its eyes remain fixed on a key moment in Florentine history.
The German artist painted death as it appeared in life – omnipresent and hidden in plain sight.