Gesamtkunstwerk

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a German term meaning total work of art, describing an artwork that synthesises all the arts — music, poetry, dance, architecture, visual art — into a unified sensory and intellectual experience; the concept was theorised by Richard Wagner, who sought to realise it in his music dramas, arguing that the separation of the arts into discrete disciplines represented a fragmentation of a primal unity that must be restored; Gesamtkunstwerk influenced the symbolist movement, the Bauhaus school's integration of fine and applied arts, and twentieth-century multimedia and performance art; the concept anticipates contemporary debates about interdisciplinary practice, immersive installation art, and the total environment art of figures like Kurt Schwitters