GESAMTKUNSTWERK

Gesamtkunstwerk is a term rich with meaning and eliciting numerous interpretations across different eras and cultures.  The term is widely known for its appearance in Richard Wagner’s essay “Art and Revolution,” (1849) in reference to the synthesis of various art forms to create a more dramatic and meaningful form.  Since the publication of this essay, the term has expanded and changed over time to describe theater, film, architecture, and many other media. In most iterations of Gesamtkunstwerk, dance has been a secondary component of the work, if present at all.  Dance, however, as a technical form, dramatic device, and social tool, fits nearly every definition of Gesamtkunstwerk offered from pre-Wagnerian time to the present.  Past works and contemporary developments support the idea that dance can stand as a primary example of Gesamtkunstwerk in a variety of contexts.

 

The term “Gesamtkunstwerk”  is believed to have made its first appearance in the 1927 essay Ästhetik oder Lehre von Weltanschauung und Kunst (Aesthetics or Theory of  Ideology and Art), by the German philosopher Karl Friedrich Eusebius Trahndorff.  Here, the term refers to a more abstract philosophy of bringing together elements of life and art.  When one refers to the term in a modern context, he is likely referring to the more popular, Wagnerian definition of the term as “the total work of art,” or a theory of bringing different art forms together in one perfect, transcendent form.  In his essays, Wagner describes the necessity of an an art form that transcends the trends of society and returns to the ancient Greek system of unleashing art in nature.  Wagner praised the Greeks for creating art in conjunction with the drama and power of everyday life, and condemned modern artists for taming their works to appeal to the “docile” christian culture of the age.  

In Greek, the phrase mousike techne, often shortened to the single word mousike, meant “art of the Muses.”  This single word, which was eventually adapted to the English word “Music,” originally referred to all arts, including forms that might no longer be considered arts, such as pottery and astronomy (Shaw-Miller p. 2).  In this early time, there was no distinction among different art forms, as well as crafts and some sciences.  It was not until 1766 that the arts were delineated separately in an essay by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing promoting purity in the arts (Shaw-Miller p.5).  

 

Wagner believed that it was his duty to reunite the arts and rekindle the drama of mousike techne.  Following the publishing of his essays, Wagner began pouring his efforts into the practice of his theory of Gesamtkunstwerk.  With the backing of King Ludwig II, the young and frivolous king of Bavaria, Wagner designed and built the Bayreuth Festival Theater, a 1,500-seat opera house designed specifically for his grand operas.  In this theater, the audience was immersed in the world of Wagner’s operas - the sounds of the orchestra drifting up from a hidden chamber below the stage while lavish sets and costumes dazzled the eyes and the drama of Wagner’s stories delighted the imagination.  Here, Wagner staged his grandest example of Gesamtkunstwerk - a cycle of four operas entitled The Ring of the Nibelung.  The story of these four operas came from medieval mythology, telling the tales of great gods and goddesses and their epic quests for good and evil.  Like Wagner’s essays, his operas condemned modern society and its materialism, and urged a return to traditional values and the promotion of art and beauty.  These operas were widely attended, and continue to be hugely popular among audiences today. Though Wagner’s operas demonstrate what many consider the closest representation of Gesamtkunstwerk in existence, even Wagner himself admitted that he alone could not achieve this lofty goal.  Gesamtkunstwerk takes more than one great mind to achieve, and could never be perfected in one lifetime.  Since Wagner’s  great operas, many artists have re-purposed and re-framed the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk in their own works, and found perhaps greater examples in the works of other ancient civilizations.  Each decade and artistic movement seems to have established its own version of Gesamtkunstwerk, many of which are vastly different from Wagner’s original interpretation.  Still, all maintain some key similarities, namely the interaction of mediums, the drama of this interaction, and the revolutionary intent of artistic unification.