Title | Creator | Date | Era | City | Country | Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) | Theme | |
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Trustee from the Toolroom | Author: Nevil Shute | 1960 | United Kingdom |
A feeling of gentleness, kindness and generosity towards good people in the world. |
The importance of pursuing one's personal values. |
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Psyche | Author: Phyllis Brett Young | 1959 | Canada |
Optimistic, Hopeful, even under terrible circumstances. |
We are beings of self-made soul |
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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. |
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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. |
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Dirty Dancing | Director: Emile Ardolino | 1987 |
Life is passionate and meaningful. |
The joy and passion of love and life and dancing, while learning integrity and independence. |
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Black Stallion | Director: Carroll Ballard | 1979 | Sardinia | Italy |
Everything is possible between boy and beast, between an innocent human and mother nature. |
Man and nature in harmony. At least this is the theme of the first half of the movie. See "Description" and "Context" info below for more on this comment. |
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Vitus | Director: Fredi Murer | 2006 |
If you have the will, you can find the way to live the way you want. |
Living your life your own way is the only right way. |
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Sainte-Chapelle | Architect: Anonymous | 1248 | Paris, Ile de la Cite | France |
The world is brilliant, light, colorful, orderly. |
The world is brilliant, light, colorful, orderly. |
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Chocolat | Director: Lasse Hallstrom | 2000 | United Kingdom |
Pleasure is good; religion and conventional thinking is bad. |
Follow your dream and disregard convention. |
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Niobe | Sculptor: unknown | c. 200 BC | Rome | Italy |
Human action is beautiful. |
Life is movement. |
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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. |
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Old Man with a Young Boy | Painter: Domenico Ghirlandaio | 1490 | 1400s | Florence | Italy |
Human companionship or family closeness is real. |
Quiet familial love. (A grandfather (perhaps) gazing upon a grandson, and vice versa, in a clear moment of happy communion.) |
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David | Sculptor: Michelangelo Buonarotti | 1504 | 1500s | Florence | Italy |
Man is a strong, indomitable creature who has the intelligence to overcome terrible odds. |
[requires assumption of some context of this work -- not a "cold" introduction to it]: A man able to face a daunting task, with tremulous calm and determination. This is the depiction of the David/Goliath story of the Bible in which David takes on the much more formidable Goliath and wins. |
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Burgos Cathedral Crossing | Architect: Unknown | 1569 circa | 1500s | Burgos | Spain |
God is order and reason and light. |
The spirit of god is rational, uplifting and rich in detail |
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Pieta | Sculptor: Michelangelo Buonarotti | 1500 | 1500s |
Resignation in the face of tragedy. |
Recognition and acceptance of a great personal loss. |
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Othello: the Moor of Venice | Playwright: William Shakespeare | 1603 | 1600s | Stratford-on-Avon | United Kingdom |
Malevolence and horrible tragedy is unrelieved. Evil is potent. |
A great man can be gullible and controlled by an evil character. Or, an evil character can have potency in the world, because of the weakness of a good man. |
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Chariot of Apollo | Sculptor: Jean Baptiste (1630-1700) Tuby | 1668-1670 | 1600s | Versailles | France |
The world has thrilling powerful men of action. There are no limits to what can be achieved. |
Elegant, physical power. The fantasy ability to fly through water and air with grace and ease. |
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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. |
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Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo (Royal Church of St. Lawrence) | Architect: Guarino Guarini | 1680 | 1600s | Torino (Turin) | Italy |
The world is perfected. The joy of seeing complexity that is simplicity, i.e., that the rich complex vision arises from simple elements which because of their arrangement provide layers of visual thrills. |
Complex, soaring geometric order. |
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Comedia | Painter: Thomas Wilmer Dewing | 1892-4c | 1800s | Philadelphia | United States |
Life is sumptuous and beautiful and alive. |
Feminine vivacity and gaiety |
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Rape of Polyxena, The | Sculptor: Pio Fedi | 1866 | 1800s |
Strength and complex beauty are central. Vitality, passion and action are hallmarks of this work. |
Life is complex strife, entwined with strong god-like characters. |
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Three Graces | Sculptor: Antonio Canova | 1814 | 1800s | Italy |
The female human form is beautiful, graceful, ideal. |
Quiet repose and sisterly love. The piece exudes a quiet elegance and peacefulness amidst the complex three-dimensional composition. The inclusion of "sisterly love" is less certain, except that taking into account the mythological background of the piece. It can be argued that one should not take that into account, so perhaps that should not formally be included in the theme. |
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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. |
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La Grande Nevrose | Loysel, Jacques: | c.1896 | 1800s | Paris | France |
The dynamic female body is beautiful and exciting. Although it may not explicitly suggest it, the nude and its tense position could be felt as erotic. |
An animated female body is a vessel of perfection. |
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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 |