生のかたち、死のかたち : 西洋の美術表現を中心に

The aim of this essay is to throw light on certain fundamental traits of life and death in the history of western art. Investigating the motives or the functions of some typical images, but not always in chronological order, we can see the thoughts and emotions in them which many of us, despite the differences of our times, places and religions, have in common.In Chapter 1, expressions on the tomb, which especially show the attitudes of the living toward the dead are surveyed, and the characteristics behind those images are examined. Chapter 2, considering the motif of the images of a mother and a child, the expressions of a newborn life and eventually a life, will explore the forms of life. And in Chapter 3, the results of these two chapters will lead to the third line where life and death are never discontinuous. As it can be observed in the motives of trees by Leonardo da Vinci or humans in the nature by Segantini, the images taken up here show that the profound artistic expressions of life and death will never be produced from a life or a death singly. They also suggest that both life and death contribute to the expressions of a life phenomenon.This recognition, moreover, brings another point of view about an individual life and death. That is, as implied in some images of the Myth of Prometheus on the Roman sarcophagus and of the mother and the child, as well as in the works of Leonardo and Segantini, a mortal individual life will be immortally handed down to the next generation in itself