So far, many of the events of the 21st century have done little to inspire a sense of progress. From the attacks of September 11, 2001, to the "long, hard slog" in Iraq, the misery of Hurricane Katrina, and, finally, the financial collapse of 2008, the euphoria and optimism that followed the fall of the Soviet Union has all but evaporated.

For Bruce Linn, the nearly eight years following September 11, 2001, set a darker tone in his work. While most of the works in "Chronicles of a Dark Age" are not explicitly political, they do evoke scenes of catastrophe from this era.

Inspired by the absurdist aesthetic and gallows humor he encountered in some of the art and culture of central Europe, during a two-year residency in Prague (2002-2004), Linn began a series of paintings in which he hoped to freely blur poetic and satiric artistic goals. Linn was influenced by the works of 19th-century Symbolist artists, like Odilon Redon and Arnold Bocklin, and the satiric works of James Ensor, Jose Posada and the Czech Illustrators Zdenek Mezl and Pavel Brazda.