| Title | Creator |
Date |
Era | City | Country | 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. |
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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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| Of Human Bondage | Maugham, W. Somerset: | 1915 | 1900 - 1950 | United Kingdom |
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. |
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| Hyacinths to feed thy soul | White, James Terry: | 1911c | 1900s | United States |
Hopeful. Even in poverty one can have beauty. |
Beauty is a form of sustenance |
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| Robie House | Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright | 1910 | 1900 - 1950 | Chicago, Illinois | United States |
The world is open and has sweeping, unending possibilities. |
The essence of a house as shelter, and providing a sense of strength and privacy. That is, a structure that exudes strength through its massive cantilever and massive brick and stone forms, along with its big overhangs sheltering the windows to create a sense of privacy and enclosure, in its urban situation. |
|
| 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". |
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| La Gomena (Towing a Boat) | Painter: Ettore Tito | 1909 | 1900s | Italy |
There is great effort in life, and a woman can be the master of it. This painting is a curious combination of romantic heroism and 19th century genre naturalism. It has a visual dynamism and dramatic content that is strongly romantic, yet the subject is the prosaic task of pulling a boat out of the water. |
The will and the power of a woman. Implacable determination. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
|
| Merry Widow (Die Lustige Witwe) | Composer: Franz Lehar | 1905 | 1900s | Vienna | Austria |
Love brings gaiety and joy to life. |
Love can be gay and tender, solemn and lighthearted, painful and joyous. |
|
| Trees | Alexander, John: | 1899 | 1900s | Olathe | United States |
A sense of the world as dynamic and strong. |
Nature is wild and dynamic. |
|
| Cyrano de Bergerac | Playwright: Edmond Rostand | 1897 | 1900s | France |
Life can be exciting. Life can be grand, literally. There is also some great sadness about consummated love, since it is portrayed as unreachable. |
The importance of independence and independent thought. Compromise is deadly to one's soul. Sub-themes: a) Doubt of one's goodness because of an incidental fact (physical feature) is terribly damaging and tragic. b) Helping someone by faking reality is damaging and can come to no good. |
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| Repose | Painter: John White Alexander | 1895 | 1900s | New York | United States |
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. |
|
| 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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| Diana | Sculptor: Auguste Saint-Gaudens | 1892 | 1900s | New York | United States |
Serenity in action. But not a strong world view in any case, quite placid. |
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| Ebben? Ne andrò lontana (aria from La Wally) | Composer: Alfredo Catalani | 1892 | 1851-1900 | Milan | Italy |
Longing is the overall emotional tone of the music. The lyric gives reason to this overall tone. |
Sadness at having to leave forever the place where you were happy once. |
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| Eiffel Tower | Designer: Gustave Eiffel | 1889 | Paris | France |
The works of Man are thrilling. |
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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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| Shade, The | Rodin, Auguste: | 1880-1904 | 1900s | Paris | France |
Life is a gruesome trial. There is no hope. |
The world destroys man. (Some unknown evil force is destroying this young strong man.) Given that the sculpture is titled as a "Shade" and is related to the Group sculpture "Gates of Hell", one can presume the evil is some unnamed condition that can overpower life and cause destruction of the good. |
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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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| Senso-ju Temple at Asakusa | Hiroshige: | 1840s c | 1800s | Tokyo | Japan |
Pure, simple, quiet tranquility. |
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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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| Staircase Group (aka Portrait of Raphaelle Peale and Titian Ramsay Peale) | Painter: Charles Wilson Peale | 1795 | Philadelphia | United States |
Perceiving accurately is important and playing with the artistic medium is fun. |
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| Ardabil Carpet | Classical Persian School: | 16th century CE | London | United Kingdom |
sumptuous eye candy. |
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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. |
