Wolf Gerhard Schmidt
Was ist ein ãGesamtkunstwerkÒ?
Zur
medienhistorischen Neubestimmung des Begriffs
Although the term ÒGesamtkunstwerkÓ has enjoyed
canonical status in aesthetic theory since the second half of the twentieth
century, no sustainable definition of it has as yet been provided. This essay
attempts to address this deficit by adopting a media-historical approach and to
this end postulates a core definition that expresses what the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries understood as a holistic, aesthetically
elaborate combination of individual art forms. From this, a distinction between
four structural components is made: artefactual (the comprehensive combination
of media); theoretical (conception of a fitting synthesis of media); narrative
(reaction to deficits in cultural meaning); and utopian (projections for models
of optimization). This workable and simultaneously flexible definition of
Gesamtkunstwerk is designed to counteract the omnipresent diffusion of the term
without privileging a particular model.
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