Gesamtkunstwerk

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Gesamtkunstwerk (translated as total work of art,^[1] ideal work of art,^[2] universal artwork,^[3] synthesis of the arts, comprehensive artwork, all-embracing art form or total artwork) is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. The term is a German word which has come to be accepted in English as a term in aesthetics.

The term was first used by the German writer and philosopher K. F. E. Trahndorff in an essay in 1827.^[4] That the aesthetic of this inherently Romantic concept preceded the explicit term may be seen in Carl Maria von Weber's enthusiastic review of the opera Undine (1814), a collaboration between E.T.A. Hoffman, who composed the score, and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué who adapted his own novella Undine for a libretto: Weber admired it in his review 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'.^[5]

The German opera composer Richard Wagner used the term in two 1849 essays. It is unclear whether Wagner knew of Trahndorff's essay. The word has become particularly associated with Wagner's aesthetic ideals.