Artist: John Everett Millais

Year: 1851-1852

Tate Britain, London

The painting depicts Ophelia, a character from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, singing while floating in a river just before she drowns. Ophelia's pose—her open arms and upwards gaze—resembles traditional portrayals of saints or martyrs. The painting is known for its depiction of the detailed flora of the river and the riverbank, stressing the patterns of growth and decay in a natural ecosystem. Contradictory to the popular impressionist and expressionist movements, this painting shows strong middle aged influences with its fine attention to details, yet in the natural setting that was common in art of the romantic era.

The Death of Casagemas (1901)

Artist: Pablo Picasso

Date: 1901

Place: Spain

The Death of Casagemas is an oil on wood painting of one of Picasso's biggest influences, Carlos Casagemas, who committed suicide after a failed relationship. His death not only was the death of an idol of Picasso’s but also the death of an era in Picasso’s work. After this event, Picasso began to recognize his own mortality and regrets. These tensions and struggles would give rise to the paintings of the Blue Period and beyond. Picasso’s style was in line with the progressing impressionist and expressionist movement with his crude brushstrokes and loose definition.

Artist: Thousands of Egytian slaves

Date: Oldest Pyramids created 2613 BC

The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures built as tombs for the country's Pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods through the use of extensive slave labor. Specifically, the Giza pyramid was estimated to have been built by 10,000 people. Cemeteries were created all around and inside the pyramid complex for members of each dynasty. The shape of a pyramid is thought to be representative of the descending rays of the sun and the location on west bank of the Nile, the site of the setting sun, was associated with the realm of the dead in Egyptian mythology.

Artist; Unknown

Date: Approx. 1795

Place: Mysore Kingdom, India

Tipu's Tiger is an 18th-century mechanical toy created for Tipu Sultan, the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in India. The carved wood casing shows a tiger savaging a near life-size European man. Mechanisms inside the tiger and man's bodies make one hand of the man move emitted a wailing sound from his mouth and grunts from the tiger. This was probably accepted because of the strained relations between India and the British East India Company. Therefore, this gruesome scene of death depicted as a toy shows that Indians truly hated the British.

http://pgt-diabolical.deviantart.com/art/Ego-Death-Mural-345415142

Artist: Priyesh Trivedi

Date: 2012

This is a 21st century mural completed by Privesh Trivedi. His influences draw mainly on the psychedelic and surrealist eras of art. The “Ego Death” depicted in this work of art is describing the phenomenon, known to be achieved through meditation and psychedelics (in this case DMT), when the perceived boundary between self and environment is lost. The artist here represents the elevation of one’s consciousness by the bright, colorful swirling patterns. This death, although not in the psychical form, still involves parting a world in which one once inhabited and entering a new one.

Artist: Robert Capa

Date Sept. 5, 1936

The Falling Solider by Robert Capa was taken in Cerro Muriano, Cordoba during the Spanish Civil War. The Falling Soldier was thought to capture the moment of a Republican soldier's death dressed in civilian-looking clothing but wearing a leather cartridge belt, and his rifle is slipping out of his right hand.   Even though recent research suggests that the picture was staged due to the fact that it was definitely not taken at the battle site of Cerro Muriano, but at Espejo, some thirty miles away, it remains a symbol of the Spanish Civil War and the horrors of 20th century warfare.

Artist: Original Unkown, Altered Chris Bilheimer

Date: 1936, 1996

Location: Denver, Colorado

This album cover was taken from the 1996 indie classic In An Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. This thematic album revolves around the reoccurring dreams the lead singer and songwriter, Jeff Mangum, had been having about the holocaust. His lyrics, somehow both cryptic and blunt, describe the gruesome scenes of those times such as the lyrics, “Now how I remember you, How I would push my fingers through, Your mouth to make those muscles move”. Mangum uses strong imagery such as this to perpetuate his theme of inevitable death. This is shown again in the album with his lyrics such as, “And one day we will die, And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea, But for now we are young, Let us lay in the sun, And count every beautiful thing we can see.” In this line, Mangum is addressing the mortality that awaits all of us, such as the dark paintings of Caravaggio, yet takes a different approach by encouraging one to live in the moment and fully appreciate the present.

http://exploring-africa.blogspot.com/2008/10/ancient-nile-valley-influences-in-extra.html