Gesamtkunstwerk

This seminar explores the long history of the “total artwork,” or Gesamtkunstwerk. Brought to prominence by composer Richard Wagner in the middle of the nineteenth century, the term is widely associated with his signature form, the music drama, which he understood as a synthesis of music, poetry, and theater. This course explores the Gesamtkunstwerk in relation to histories of art and design. It proposes that the roots of this concept lie decades before Wagner, in the aesthetic theory of the Romantic period, and that its offshoots reach far beyond Wagner’s own day, enabling the choreographed interiors of the fin de siècle, and undergirding pivotal twentieth century attempts to unite art and life. Expanding on Wagner’s vision of the Gesamtkunstwerk as a musical and literary phenomenon, this seminar proposes it as central to the formation and theorization of modern art and design from the nineteenth century to today. We will examine the precursors of the Gesamtkunstwerk; its manifestations in Wagner’s operas and stagecraft; and its influence on the Aesthetic Movement, Art Nouveau, twentieth-century European modernisms, as well as its relevance for art and design strategies of the present day. The seminar will be taught collaboratively between Yale University and Bard Graduate Center, and will include opportunities for students from both institutions to meet and exchange ideas, with some joint class sessions in New York and New Haven, respectively. 3 credits.