Postulating the impossible? The ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk in interwar avant-garde periodicals and their manifestos

Abstract

The nineteenth-century principle of Gesamtkunstwerk was inseparably linked to the interwar avant-garde, as indicated in a plethora of manifestos and programmatic writings published in periodicals such as De Stijl, 7 Arts and Blok. The widely postulated interrelation of the arts in the service of social and cultural regeneration, however, did not always prove easy to implement. The social renewal of the Total Work of Art prophesied by avant-garde writers, painters and architects could hardly be achieved. This contribution seeks to answer the question whether the very synthesis of arts too was just an unachievable dream. Based on selected programmatic writings from avant-garde periodicals of Polish, Dutch and Belgian provenance I will analyse the recurring similarities and divergences that characterised various approaches to achieving the Total Work of Art voiced by particular artists. Subsequently I will scrutinise the chronicles of the actual cooperation between artists and architects in order to shed light on the actual application of the Gesamtkunstwerk ideal and the (im)possibility of its implementation.

Keywords:

• Gesamtkunstwerk
• Total Work of Art
• avant-garde
• Poland
• Low Countries

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

National Science Centre, Poland, grant [2014/13/N/HS2/02757].

Notes on contributors

Michał Wenderski

Michał Wenderski, PhD, is assistant professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, where he specialises in modern Dutch and Flemish art and literature. His research is devoted to the history of cultural mobility between Poland and the Low Countries in the fields of literature, fine arts and architecture. He is currently head of a research project devoted to Cold War international cultural relationships between Poland and the Netherlands.