AGesamtkunstwerk (German:[ɡəˈzamtˌkʊnstvɛʁk]ⓘ, 'total work of art',[1] 'ideal work of art',[2] 'universal artwork',[3] 'synthesis of the arts', 'comprehensive artwork', or 'all-embracing art form') is a work of art that makes use of all or manyart forms or strives to do so. The term is a Germanloanword accepted in English as a term inaesthetics.
The term was developed by the German writer and philosopherK. F. E. Trahndorff in his 1827 essayÄsthetik oder Lehre von Weltanschauung und Kunst (or 'Aesthetics, or Doctrine of Worldview and Art').[4] The German opera composerRichard Wagner used the term in two 1849 essays, and the word has become particularly associated with his aesthetic ideals.[5] It is unclear whether Wagner knew of Trahndorff's essay.[citation needed]
In France in the 1850s,Viollet-le-Duc was a proponent of integrating major arts (architecture) and minor arts (decorative arts) intoun art total. This led to fierce combat with the Beaux Arts academy in Paris who refused Viollet-le-Duc's educational reforms in 1863. If his ideas had little success in France they spread around Europe through his teachings and books, like hisReasoned dictionary of French architecture and furniture. This book influenced an entire span of young architects around the world; John Ruskin used it intensely to teach his Arts and Crafts students (William Morris, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Philip Webb), the entire Art Nouveau movement in Europe, and the modernists thereafter. An example is the Maison Tasel de Horta in Brussels or the Villa Cavrois in Croix in the Nord department, designed by the architect Robert-Mallet Stevens.
In the 20th century, some writers applied the term to some forms of architecture, while others applied it to film and mass media.[6]
Some elements of opera had begun seeking a more 'classical' formula at the end of the 18th century. After the lengthy domination ofopera seria and theda capo aria, a movement began to advance thelibrettist and the composer in relation to the singers, and to return the drama to a more intense and less moralistic focus. This movement, 'reform opera', is primarily associated withChristoph Willibald Gluck andRanieri de' Calzabigi. The themes in the operas produced by Gluck's collaborations with Calzabigi continue throughout the operas ofCarl Maria von Weber, until Wagner, rejecting both the Italianbel canto tradition and theFrench 'spectacle opera', developed his union of music, drama, theatrical effects, and occasionally dance.[citation needed]
However, these trends had developed fortuitously, rather than in response to a specific philosophy of art. Wagner, who recognised the reforms of Gluck and admired the works of Weber, originally wished to consolidate his view as part of his radical social and political views of the late 1840s. Previous to Wagner, others had expressed ideas about union of the arts, which was a familiar topic among GermanRomantics, as evidenced by the title of Trahndorff's essay, 'Aesthetics, or Theory of Philosophy of Art'. Others who wrote on syntheses of the arts includedGotthold Ephraim Lessing,Ludwig Tieck andNovalis.[7]Carl Maria von Weber's enthusiastic review ofE.T.A. Hoffmann's operaUndine (1816) admired it as 'an art work complete in itself, in which partial contributions of the related and collaborating arts blend together, disappear, and, in disappearing, somehow form a new world'.[8]
Wagner used the exact termGesamtkunstwerk (which he spelt 'Gesammtkunstwerk') on only two occasions, in his 1849 essays 'Art and Revolution' and 'The Artwork of the Future',[9] where he speaks of his ideal of unifying all works of art via the theatre.[10] He also used in these essays many similar expressions such as 'the consummate artwork of the future' and 'the integrated drama', and frequently referred to 'Gesamtkunst'.[7] Such a work of art was to be the clearest and most profound expression of folk legend.[citation needed]
Wagner felt that the Greek tragedies ofAeschylus had been the finest (though still flawed) examples so far of total artistic synthesis, but that this synthesis had subsequently been corrupted byEuripides. Wagner felt that during the rest of human history up to the present day (i.e. 1850) the arts had drifted further and further apart, resulting in such 'monstrosities' asGrand Opera. Wagner felt that such works celebrated bravura singing, sensational stage effects, and meaningless plots. In 'Art and Revolution', Wagner applies the termGesamtkunstwerk in the context of Greek tragedy. In 'The Art-Work of the Future', he uses it to apply to his own, as yet unrealized, ideal.[citation needed]
In his extensive bookOpera and Drama (completed in 1851), Wagner takes these ideas further, describing in detail his idea of the union of opera and drama (later calledmusic drama despite Wagner's disapproval of the term), in which the individual arts are subordinated to a common purpose.[citation needed]
Wagner's own opera cycleDer Ring des Nibelungen, specifically its componentsDas Rheingold andDie Walküre, represent perhaps the closest he, or anyone else, came to realizing these ideals.[11] After this stage, Wagner came to relax his own strictures and write more conventionally 'operatically'.[12]
William Morris (1834–1896), a British textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist, was associated with the BritishArts and Crafts movement and largely influenced by the ideas ofJohn Ruskin, who believed that industrialization led to a qualitative decline in artistically crafted goods. Morris believed a home must nurture harmony as well as infuse its inhabitants with a creative energy.
The quote 'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful' epitomized Morris' way of living ofGesamtkunstwerk.
Morris' andPhilip Webb'sRed House, designed in 1859, is a major example, as well as theBlackwell House in theEnglish Lake District, designed byBaillie Scott.Blackwell House was built in 1898–1900, as a holiday home for Sir Edward Holt, a wealthy Manchester brewer. It is situated near the town of Bowness-on-Windermere with views looking over Windermere and across to the Coniston Fells.[citation needed]
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Some architectural writers have used the termGesamtkunstwerk to signify circumstances where an architect is responsible for the design and/or overseeing of the building's totality: shell, accessories, furnishings, and landscape.[13] It is difficult to make a claim for when the termGesamtkunstwerk was first used to refer to a building and its contents (although the term itself was not used in this context until the late 20th century); already during the Renaissance, artists such asMichelangelo saw no strict division in their tasks between architecture, interior design, sculpture, painting and even engineering.[citation needed]
Historian Robert L. Delevoy has argued that Art Nouveau represented an essentially decorative trend that thus lent itself to the idea of the architecturalGesamtkunstwerk. Of course, it is equally possible it was born from social theories that arose out of a fear of the rise of industrialism.[14]
Nonetheless, evidence of complete interiors that typify the concept ofGesamtkunstwerk can be seen from some time before the 1890s. An increasing trend among architects in the 18th and 19th centuries was to control every facet of an architectural commission. As well as being responsible for the structure itself, they tried to extend their role to also include designing (or at least vetting) every aspect of the interior work. This included not only the interior architectural features but also the design[15] of furniture, carpets, wallpaper, fabrics, light fixtures, and door-handles.Robert Adam andAugustus Welby Pugin are examples of this trend to create an overall harmonising effect which in some cases might even extend to the choice or design of table silver, china, and glassware.[citation needed]
The form and ideology ofGesamtkunstwerk was regularly engaged with by theArt Nouveau artists and architects of the period. BelgiansVictor Horta andHenry Van de Velde, CatalanAntoni Gaudí, FrenchHector Guimard, ScottishCharles Rennie Mackintosh, AustrianJosef Hoffmann, Russian-GermanFranz (Fyodor) Schechtel, FinnEliel Saarinen, and many other architects also acted as furniture and interior designers.
Many Art Nouveau masterpieces were results of cooperation of artists of different fields:
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The architectural movement ofModernism also saw architects implementing this principle ofGesamtkunstwerk.Centre Le Corbusier is an example by famed Modernist architectLe Corbusier.[27]TheVilla Cavrois mansion in France is another example of modernistGesamtkunstwerk, designed by French architectRobert Mallet-Stevens.
The albumGesamtkunstwerk was released by Detroit, electro bandDopplereffekt in 1999 onInternational Deejay Gigolos.[28]
The multi-media style pioneered byDadaists such asHugo Ball has also been called aGesamtkunstwerk.[29] 'Towards the Merz Gesamtkunstwerk' was a University of Oregon graduate seminar that explored themes of Dadaism andGesamtkunstwerk, especially Kurt Schwitter's legendary Merzbau.[30] They citeRichard Huelsenbeck in his German Dada Manifesto: 'Life appears as a simultaneous confusion of noises, colours and spiritual rhythms, and is thus incorporated — with all the sensational screams and feverish excitements of its audacious everyday psyche and the entirety of its brutal reality — unwaveringly into Dadaist art'.[31][32]
In 2011,Saatchi Gallery in London heldGesamtkunstwerk: New Art from Germany, a survey exhibition of 24 contemporary German artists.[33]
An exhibition entitledUtopia Gesamtkunstwerk, curated by Bettina Steinbrügge and Harald Krejci, took place from January to May 2012 at the21er Haus inBelvedere, Vienna. It was a 'contemporary perspective of the historical idea of the total work of art' and included a display by Esther Stocker based on the idea of 'the untidy nursery',[34] it housed works byJoseph Beuys,Monica Bonvicini,Christian Boltanski,Marcel Broodthaers,Daniel Buren,Heinz Emigholz,Valie Export, Claire Fontaine, gelatin,Isa Genzken,Liam Gillick,Thomas Hirschhorn,Ilya Kabakov,Martin Kippenberger,Gordon Matta-Clark,Paul McCarthy,Superflex,Franz West, and numerous others.[35] An accompanying book exploring the topic was produced with the same name.[36]
Many reviews have characterized thecontemporary art exhibition the 9th Berlin Biennale as aGesamtkunstwerk.[37][38][39][40]
In 2017, prominent visual artistsShirin Neshat andWilliam Kentridge directed operas at theSalzburg Festival.[41]
The Catholic Mass has been cited as an example of aGesamtkunstwerk, and one could consider various liturgical expressions to be similar examples.[42]Beyoncé has created multiple works that have been considered examples ofGesamtkunstwerk.[43][44][45]
Canadian development corporation Westbank, founded byIan Gillespie, usesGesamtkunstwerk as the founding idea behind the company's vision and philosophy forurban development.[46][15]
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