The artwork of the future
Alongside opera and drama, the work of art of the future is one of Richard Wagner's two “art-theoretical” writings , which he wrote in Zurich from 1849 to 1852.
As in his work Die Kunst und die Revolution , Wagner laments the collapse of the arts and develops his model of the new unity of the arts, the “ Gesamtkunstwerk ”. His work is published in Volume 3 of his collected works and is divided into the following chapters:
- I. Man and art in general.
- 1. Nature and people
- 2. Life, Science and Art
- 3. The people and the arts
- 4. The people as the determining force for the work of art
- 5. The artless design of contemporary life under the rule of abstraction and fashion
- 6. Benchmark for the artwork of the future
- II. The artistic man and the art directly derived from him.
- 1. Man, his own artistic object and material
- 2. The three purely human art forms in their original associations
- 3. Dance art
- 4. Tonkunst
- 5. Poetry
- 6. Previous attempts to reunite the three human arts
- III. Man as an artistic sculptor made from natural materials
- 1. Architecture
- 2. Sculpture
- 3. Painting
- IV. Main features of the artwork of the future.
- V. The artist of the future.
Wagner developed - as in his previous writings - his conviction that Greek art was embedded in Greek religion and mysticism and, through the destruction of religion, also that art could break free from cohesion and move into "individual arts" (drama, music and dance ) had to degenerate. He complains that the art of music has withered as a pure background to the word.
In the further course of his difficult to read explanations, which are written in extravagant box sentences with many repetitions, he goes into great detail on the development of the different arts, from the ideal state during antiquity to the decadence of his time. In doing so, he again vehemently criticizes the general social conditions, advancing industrialization and the Christian religion, leaning heavily on Ludwig Feuerbach , to whom he also dedicated this work with an accompanying letter. He comes to the conclusion that the “work of art of the future” can only flourish through a union of sound art, dance art and drama, in interaction with the visual arts (building, painting and sculpture), and that the Impetus for this would have to come from the people. He ends his remarks with a provocative exclamation against the art establishment:
- Remember that where a part of state society only engages in superfluous art and literature, another part necessarily only has to wipe out the filth of your useless existence; that where aesthetics and fashion fill a whole unnecessary life, rawness and clumsiness must constitute the main features of another life; that where senseless luxury seeks to satisfy its all-consuming ravenous hunger by force, the natural need, on the other hand, can only satisfy luxury through hardship and misery. As long as you intelligent egoists and selfish educated people bloom in artificial fragrances, there must necessarily be a substance from whose vital sap you distill your sweet perfumes: And this substance, from which you have withdrawn its natural fragrance, is only this malevolent mob, from its proximity you are disgusted and you have squeezed out its natural grace.
- But we do not understand you or this mob by the people. Only when neither this nor you will one day no longer exist can we imagine the existence of the true people. The people are already living wherever you and the mob are not, i.e. H. it lives in the midst of both of you, only that you don't know anything about it ... and if you know about it, you are already a people, because you can't know anything about the people without having a part in them. The most highly educated and the most uneducated, the most knowledgeable and the most ignorant, the most highly placed, like the most inferior, those who grew up in the lush bosom of luxury, those who have crept up from the unclean nest of poverty, those who have been raised in learned heartlessness and those who have developed in vicious rawness. .. as soon as he feels an urge to finally break out of the cowardly comfort of our social and state conditions or the stupid subjugation under them, which only makes him feel disgust for the stale joys of our inhuman culture and hatred of a being of utility that gives him contempt against the self-sufficient submissive (this most unworthy egoist!) or anger against the cocky wrongdoer in human nature ... only he, only he now belongs to the people, because he and all his equals feel a common need. This need will give the people the rule of life; it will raise them to the sole power of life.
In his following and most important written work, Opera and Drama , Richard Wagner then explains very precisely (and very theoretically) how he imagines the optimal “union” of music and poetry. A little later he set about the “practical” execution and, over years of work, wrote and composed his Ring des Nibelungen as the musical drama par excellence.
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- Richard Wagner: The artwork of the future. Wigand, Leipzig 1850. ( Digitized and full text in the German text archive )
- Sven Friedrich (Ed.): Richard Wagner; Works, writings and letters . Digital library, Berlin 2004.
- Richard Wagner: Complete Writings and Seals , Leipzig 1911.