Title Creator Date Era City Countrysort icon Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) Theme
The Samovar Painter: Emil Carlsen 1920c. 1900s

The world is full of textural richness worth looking at.

The richness of light and the objects it caresses.  This is a paean to the richness of visual experience, but with the simplest of materials -- just a light source and two kinds of simple unadorned objects.

Owl and the Sparrow Director: Stephane Gauger 2007 1991-2010 Saigon Vietnam

A child shows sweetness and strength and determination.

Searching for family, for soulmates.

Johnson Wax Building Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright 1939 1900 - 1950 Racine United States

Day to day life can be exalted and pleasurable.

To Work should be a condition of grandeur and joy.

Etudes Choreographer: Harold Lander 1948 Pre-1950 Ballet/Dance New York United States

Thrilling pleasure at beautiful movement and great success at developing the best within you.

Hard work results in great achievement in life -- and that results in beauty and excitement in life.

Dangerous Beauty Director: Marshall Herskovitz 1998 United States

The world is a horrible split of conventional marital morality vs. honest but promiscuous morality. The way to live requires one sacrifice one's body for one's soul.

  1. The importance of accepting your own rules for living, your own morality.
  2. The grim metaphysical conflict for a Venetian woman of being a slave to a husband or a free woman requiring sexual work.
Die Hard Director: John McTiernan 1988 July 15 United States

The way to beat evil is to give no quarter, no compromise. Life is hard, but fighting for the right is rewarded.

Giving up in life is not an option.

Romeo + Juliet Director: Baz Luhrmann 1996 1991-2010 United States

Tragedy is central to life.

Romantic Love is doomed and we don't control our own lives.

Real Adventure, The Author: Henry Kitchell Webster 1915 United States

Life is wonderful as long as you realize that life has to be earned the hard way.

Creating your self is the only way to live.

Atlas Shrugged Author: Ayn Rand 1957 1951 - 2000 New York United States

Life can be good; Men are competent to live happily; The world can be a shining, happy place to exist, if one is free. But novel also presents a dark, dystopian world to help make real that positive view.

The crucial value of the human mind.

Blue Steps of Naumkeag Landscape Designer: Fletcher Steele 1937-39 1900 - 1950 Stockbridge, MA United States

elegance and grace

The man-made enhances nature -- it is what makes nature beautiful

Wall Street Director: Oliver Stone 1987 1971-1990 United States

There are bad people in power who use ordinary people as pawns in their endless pursuit of money. Those who are not ruthless are sheep to be slaughtered by the rich and powerful. Greed is bad.

Financiers are amoral money-grubbing backstabbers, i.e., desire for money corrupts

Camelot Composer: Lerner and Loewe 1960 1951-2000 New York United States

One must attempt to live by values, even though virtue is powerless and hopeless.

Camelot: a medieval place of goodness and justice, and its inevitable failure.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams Composer: Warren and Dubin 1933-34 1900s United States

Weariness & Sadness

Life is loss of dreams and sadness

King in Khaki, A Author: Henry Kitchell Webster 1909 1900 - 1950 United States

Honesty is a noble and practical way of life.

Business acumen produces both material wealth and moral right.

The success of the entrepreneur in this story, along with his relation to all his staff and secondary and tertiary folks on the island who work for him -- makes him into a "king" based on important human relations and the rightness of his decisions that result in a successful business enterprise.

A subsidiary theme might be termed the power of morality over physical power or economic "power".

Attila (live performance) Composer: Giuseppe Verdi 2010 03 03 1851-1900 New York United States

Life is a mix of strength, heroism, romantic passion.

The work is a long complex opera, so it has many other lyrical emotions as part of it, but this covers the basic sense of life.

Loving a heroic woman leads to death

East of Eden Author: John Steinbeck 1952 1951 - 2000 United States

Life is filled with great and important choices.

The battle between good and evil, guilt and innocence. Takes the position that we are influenced by many things, but ultimately we have free will.

Wall-E Director: Andrew Stanton 2008 1991-2010 Hollywood United States

The world is garbage, and more garbage and humans have destroyed the earth, because of their wanton consumerism.

Mankind is a blight on the universe, and only cute robots (as opposed to evil robots) can save the earth from human degradation.

Comedia Painter: Thomas Wilmer Dewing 1892-4c 1800s Philadelphia United States

Life is sumptuous and beautiful and alive.

Feminine vivacity and gaiety

Brass Bowl, The Vance, Louis Joseph: 1907 1900 - 1950 United States

The world is a delightful place. Good things happen to the deserving.

Life as a gay, lighthearted adventure.

Fame Director: Alan Parker 1980 1971-1990 New York United States

Life is hard, but you can succeed, and it is worth it and exhilarating.

Go after your heart's desire.

Bolero Dancers: Torvill and Dean 1994 1990-2009 United States

Harmony, grace exist.

Two people as one.

Head of a Bearded Man Domenichino: 1625c 1600s New York United States

Pensive, worried, detached qualities of humanity

Worry is the way of the world.

Ruggles of Red Gap Director: Leo McCarey 1935 1931-1950 United States

Happiness and fulfillment is in yourself.

Personal declaration of independence from servitude

National Farmers' Bank Architect: Louis Sullivan 1907 1900 - 1950 Owatonna MN United States

Being able to breath freely -- expansively, and feeling that there are no limits to what man can do.

The world is expansively, infinitely rich.

The New Colossus Author: Emma Lazarus 1883 1800s New York, NY United States

Benevolent celebration of liberty as a beacon to a troubled world.

A marvelous land of liberty offers welcome to the oppressed of the world.