| Creator | Title | Emotional Sum (Sense of Life or emotional World View) | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Painter: Peale, Charles Wilson | Staircase Group (aka Portrait of Raphaelle Peale and Titian Ramsay Peale) | Perceiving accurately is important and playing with the artistic medium is fun. | |
| Villeroy & Boch | Chocolate Pitcher and Butter Dish | Friendly warmth (arising from the simple graceful lines, and the unadorned simplicity of the colors without ornament) | |
| Sculptor: Tuby, Jean Baptiste (1630-1700) | Chariot of Apollo | 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.<br> |
| Screenwriter: Chopra Vidhu Vinod | 3 Idiots | Life can be fun and productive and exciting. As is true in some other Bollywood features, this story and the ideas behind it about pursuing the good life, has an honesty and clarity and benevolence that is not part of the U.S. movie scene. | Be what you want to be; follow your passion in life |
| Alexander, John | Trees | A sense of the world as dynamic and strong. | Nature is wild and dynamic. |
| Author: Webster, Henry Kitchell | King in Khaki, A | 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". |
| 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". |
| Designer: Esherick, Wharton | Fireplace and Door | Very orderly exuberance, via "explosive" geometry | |
| Composer: Warren and Dubin | Boulevard of Broken Dreams | Weariness & Sadness | Life is loss of dreams and sadness |
| 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. |
| Vase Painter: Euphronios | Euphronios Krater aka Sarpedon Krater | Exquisitely beautiful hardship. | |
| Painter: Carlsen, Emil | The Samovar | 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.<br> |
| Author: Shute, Nevil | Trustee from the Toolroom | A feeling of gentleness, kindness and generosity towards good people in the world. |
The importance of pursuing one's personal values.<br> |
| Sculptor: Buonarotti, Michelangelo | David | 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. |
| Choreographer: Lander, Harold | Etudes | 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.<br> |
| 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. |
| 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. | |
| Shute, Nevil | Landfall | Heroes and Heroines are self-made, by anyone at any level of intelligence who seriously pursues what is important in their lives. |
Truth will triumph -- with perseverance. |
| Landscape Designer: Steele, Fletcher | Blue Steps of Naumkeag | elegance and grace | The man-made enhances nature -- it is what makes nature beautiful |
| 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. |
| Designer: Fortuny, Mariano | Green fabric | Still produced by the Fortuny fabric company. | |
| 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.) |
| Architect: Wright, Frank Lloyd | Johnson Wax Building | Day to day life can be exalted and pleasurable. |
To Work should be a condition of grandeur and joy.<br> |
| Sculptor: Saint-Gaudens, Auguste | Diana | Serenity in action. But not a strong world view in any case, quite placid. | |
| Composer: Handman, Lou | Are You Lonesome Tonight? | Sensuality and bitterness | The remembrance of past love. |