Modernism’s Gesamtkunstwerk presupposed a stable system of distinct arts, which postmodernism dissolves

Evidence

Like synesthesia in the literary real (Baudelaire), the ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk respected the “system” of the various fine arts and paid it tribute in the notion of some vaster overarching synthesis in which they might all somehow “combine” (the theoretical and philosophical parallel to yesterday’s notion of the interdisciplinary is striking), generally under the “fraternal leadership” of one of them — in the case of Wagner, of music. The present installation is, as has been suggested, no longer that, not least because the very “system” on which the older synthesis was based has itself become problematical, along with the claim of any one of the individual fine arts to its own intrinsic autonomy or semiautonomy. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 400

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Gesamtkunstwerk ideal and contrasts it with postmodern mixed media, where the ‘mix’ comes first and redefines the media a posteriori.