Abstract
The 19th century notion of a Gesamtkunstwerk or “total work of art” referred to a performance spectacle that synthesized multiple forms of the arts into a unified work, often times taking place in a grand setting that befit the spectacle. Such a performance would be a quasi-religious ceremony occurring in a location akin to a temple. We argue here that, long before aesthetic theorists devised the notion of a total work of art, religious ceremonies themselves showed all of the key features of a Gesamtkunstwerk. In fact, we propose that ceremonial rituals are essentially assemblages of arts-related behaviors and objects, and that this observation provides the historical and cognitive underpinnings for what would later become the total work of art in aesthetic practice. An important implication of this argument is that religion and the arts co-evolved during the course of human history.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Evolutionary Sociology and Biosociology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Sociology
Long before aesthetic theorists devised the notion of a total work of art, religious ceremonies themselves showed all of the key features of a Gesamtkunstwerk
We will argue in this paper that, long before European aesthetic theorists had devised the notion of a GKW, ceremonial rituals in indigenous cultures had for millennia been syntheses of the arts on a similar scale and of a similar scope to GKW’s
Summary
The previous section established a recipe for building a total work of art by describing the ways in which the arts can be combined to generate synthetic forms. A scientific worldview would be skeptical of the idea that artified rituals themselves are effective at resolving the vital pragmatic problems that inspire them, for example those related to successful hunting or influencing weather patterns, we consider them valuable in that they address and satisfy evolved emotional needs in human psychology Rituals, through their characteristic operations, create and reinforce emotionally-satisfying and psychologically-necessary feelings of mutuality and intimacy with other people (Bowlby, 1946; Miller and Rodgers, 2001; Dissanayake, 2011), as well as a sense of belonging to a group (Hinde, 1974; Baumeister and Leary, 1995; Dissanayake, 2000; Gratier and Apter-Danon, 2009). In the early Renaissance these began to decline and popular entertainments, always present, gained, becoming dominant in the form of the public theaters of the Elizabethan period” (Schechner, 1974, p. 470)
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