Gesamtkunstwerk

[guh-zahmt-koonst-verk]

noun

German.

1. total art work; an artistic creation, as the music dramas of Richard Wagner, that synthesizes the elements of music, drama, spectacle, dance, etc.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Gesamtkunstwerk¹

First recorded in 1935–40; from German: literally, “total art work”

Example Sentences

But it was in the staging of his own plays that he approached the Wagnerian ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk or integrated artwork.

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An interdisciplinary artist who doesn’t dabble in composition, performance, filmmaking and choreography so much as create from a Gesamtkunstwerk state of mind, in which each medium is dependent on the other, Monk is both a holdout of New York’s “downtown” past and a sui generis American master.

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But perhaps we do not need “Oliver!” to be a Gesamtkunstwerk.

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“They found this way to kind of industrialize the Gesamtkunstwerk,” or total work of art, Fineberg said.

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He appeared periodically, Oz-like, as a video projection on a floating egg, making oracular pronouncements, from claiming, “The weapon is good; the penis is bad,” to predicting that 2023 will be the year when Germany becomes a Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art.

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