The Total Work of Art

Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art. The German word describes a work that uses all or many art forms together. The philosopher K. F. E. Trahndorff used it in 1827.

Richard Wagner made the idea famous. In two essays of 1849, Die Kunst und die Revolution and Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft, he described an art that unites all the arts through the theater. English uses the German word.

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