Matthew Wilson Smith: The Total Work of Art: From Bayreuth to Cyberspace

Abstract

Matthew Smith's book testifies to the recent and long overdue resurgence of interest in the idea and history of the total work of art. Despite the centrality of Wagner's theory and practice to any discussion of the Gesamtkunstwerk, it is important to recognize that the idea goes back to the German Romantics and the festivals of the French Revolution, which mobilized the arts to celebrate the People, the Republic, and the Nation, and that the history of the total work of art since Wagner extends from the avant-garde movements of the early years of the twentieth century through to Hollywood and contemporary mass culture. Smith has not set out to tackle the still unwritten history of the total work. His aim, rather, is to illuminate this history through the prism of the relationship between the total work, technology, and mass culture, with reference to Wagner (Chapter 2), Germany between the wars (Chapters 3–5), and postwar America (Chapters 6–8). This history is one of discontinuities as much as of continuities. Between Wagner and the Bauhaus and Brecht lies the First World War. Between the German avant-garde and Disneyland lies the Second World War and the Götterdämmerung of the Third Reich.