Fate vs. free will
Featured Artworks
The Creation of Adam
Michelangelo (c.1511–1512)
Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam crystallizes the instant before life is conferred, staging a charged interval between two nearly touching hands. The fresco turns Genesis into a study of <strong>imago Dei</strong>, bodily perfection, and the threshold between inert earth and <strong>active spirit</strong> <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[2]</sup>.
The Third of May 1808
Francisco Goya (1814)
Francisco Goya’s The Third of May 1808 turns a specific reprisal after Madrid’s uprising into a universal indictment of <strong>state violence</strong>. A lantern’s harsh glare isolates a civilian who raises his arms in a <strong>cruciform</strong> gesture as a faceless firing squad executes prisoners, transforming reportage into <strong>modern anti-war testimony</strong> <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[2]</sup>.
The Raft of the Medusa
Theodore Gericault (1818–1819)
The Raft of the Medusa stages a modern catastrophe as epic tragedy, pivoting from corpses to a surge of <strong>collective hope</strong>. The diagonal mast, torn sail, and a Black figure waving a cloth toward a tiny ship compress the moment when despair turns to <strong>precarious rescue</strong> <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[2]</sup>.
No. 5, 1948
Jackson Pollock (1948)
<strong>No. 5, 1948</strong> is a large, floor‑painted field of poured enamel where tangled skeins of black, gray, umber, and bursts of yellow span the entire support. Its <strong>all‑over</strong> structure rejects a central motif, turning the painting into a record of motion and material behavior. The result is a charged surface that reads as both <strong>image and event</strong> <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[2]</sup><sup>[3]</sup>.