The video, Klimt, Death, and LifeLinks to an external site. provides a good example of how to discuss and analyze a work of art.
Pay attention to what the narrators call out about the paintings and how they interpret what Klimt might have been trying to do symbolically or visually.
Notice how the narrators in the video discuss certain visual aspects of the painting while also discussing the trends that may have influenced Klimt’s work.
Think about how you might do the same as you discuss the paintings and the poem in your response
In Klimt’s Death and Life and Stokes’ “La Jeune Fille et la Mort” (The Young Girl and Death), death appears as a dark, threatening figure, someone who will steal or threaten what is living and sacred.
Yet in Gibran’s poem, “The Beauty of Death”Links to an external site., the poet asks those he leaves in death to “Go back to the joy of your dwellings and you will find there / That which Death cannot remove from you and me” as though he is assuring us that there is nothing to be feared, nothing sacred that death can take away—love, joy, the memory of those who have died.
• Which perspective do you agree with, and why?
• Or do you see a combination of both?
In this discussion, write about which piece of art or literature from this module resonates most strongly with you, and provide at least 3 specific examples from your choice that you feel are a proper representation of death or the experience of those who remain after someone dies.
