| Creator | Title | Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Director: Caton-Jones, Michael | Rob Roy | Life is a struggle. The life you make for yourself can be difficult, but living it with strength and morality is the way to live. Happiness is possible in romance. | Heroism in everyday life leads to heroism writ large. A man works hard to lead his life and those of his extended clan in an honorable, productive, honest way. This is the everyday heroism. But dishonorable, evil men seek to steal from him and ruin him. This leads to a life of larger-than-life heroism to vanquish his mortal, and stronger enemies. |
| Myron? | Riace Bronze A | Man is strong and indomitable | Intelligence, Pride, Strength = Man |
| Painter: Alexander, John White | Repose | Life is extravagant and lush and sensual. | Feminine Sensuality is a main theme, though one can argue that a related (equal theme or sub-theme) is: The Lushness of the Material World. The dramatic draped womanly figure pressing against a divan, whose figure is clearly oulined, shares the visual dominance of the painting along with the magnificent sweeps of her dress and the giant pillows, the massive backrest, and even the strong elements of the floor material and the golden back wall. All together a remarkable composition. |
| Director: Korda Alexander | Rembrandt | Life is hard as an independent spirit, and wealth will elude you, but you will be happy, after a fashion. | |
| Architect: Guarini, Guarino | Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo (Royal Church of St. Lawrence) | 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. |
| Author: Webster, Henry Kitchell | Real Adventure, The | 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. |
| Director: Kurosawa, Akira | Rashomon | The world is terrible and full of disasters and mankind is awful and pathetic. | Objectivity is a myth -- everyone sees a different reality, a different "story". |
| Sculptor: Fedi, Pio | Rape of Polyxena, The | 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. |
| Author: Young, Phyllis Brett | Psyche | Optimistic, Hopeful, even under terrible circumstances. |
We are beings of self-made soul<br> |
| Photographer: Ommer, Uwe | Pirelli Calendar Diver | Women can be strong, dynamic and unconsciously beautiful. | |
| Sculptor: Buonarotti, Michelangelo | Pieta | Resignation in the face of tragedy. | Recognition and acceptance of a great personal loss. |
| Director: Gauger, Stephane | Owl and the Sparrow | A child shows sweetness and strength and determination. | Searching for family, for soulmates. |
| Playwright: Shakespeare, William | Othello: the Moor of Venice | 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.<br> |
| Painter: Ghirlandaio, Domenico | Old Man with a Young Boy | 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.) |
| Maugham, W. Somerset | Of Human Bondage | Life is a fearful gray spread of actions and in-actions without genuine values. We are all deformed in mind or spirit and should accept convention as demanded by those around us. | Man's life is outside his control. Conventionality is the final ideal. |
| Schaefer, Taf Lebel | Octopus | Playful. | |
| Sculptor: unknown | Niobe | Human action is beautiful. | Life is movement. |
| Architect: Sullivan, Louis | National Farmers' Bank | Being able to breath freely -- expansively, and feeling that there are no limits to what man can do. | The world is expansively, infinitely rich. |
| Playwright: Shakespeare, William | Much Ado About Nothing | Sweetness and light and beauty are what the world is made of. | |
| Blum, Robert Frederick | Moods to Music | Life is colorful and glorious. |
Pure joy of movement and femininity. |
| Director: Benigni, Roberto | Monster, The | Just laughter and more of the same. | |
| Composer: Lehar, Franz | Merry Widow (Die Lustige Witwe) | Love brings gaiety and joy to life. |
Love can be gay and tender, solemn and lighthearted, painful and joyous. |
| Creator: Weiner, Matthew | Mad Men | Men must sell their souls in order to live, and they are chauvinist pigs to boot. And women are sluts. Dark. | |
| Director and Screenwriter: Curtis, Richard | Love Actually | Romantic love, family love, filial love, and the love of friendship are of central importance to human existence, and are possible to achieve. | Wonderful experiences of love are found in many forms and places. |
| Sculptor: Agesander | Laocoon (Laocoön and His Sons) | Life is a desperate, agonizing struggle. | The heroic but agonizing defeat of Men. This sculpture certainly represents at the same time the heroic nature of men but cast into an impossible situation that can only be tragic. |