Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 14 Number 2, August 2013
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David Roberts, The Total Work of Art in European Modernism (Cornell UP: 2011)
Review by
University of Lincoln
Modernist art can be a particularly perplexing field to navigate. It is plagued/blessed by an extraordinary diversity from the destructive futurist serate to Kandinsky’s spiritual kaleidoscope of colours, from Brecht’s political materialism to the symbolist’s strange, mystical, indefinite worlds. In attempting to make sense of such a myriad collection of artworks, one is obliged to impose narratives in order to bring an element of coherence. In The Total Work of Art in European Modernism, Professor Emeritus of German at Monash University David Roberts chooses the total work of art as his narrative tool, a creative method that, as he suggests in the opening pages, is useful because it acts as a bridging device between the left-right political divide and between the modern and the antimodern (2). His early proclamation captures Roberts’ ongoing preoccupation to deal with art and its context (aesthetics and politics). Clearly, and Roberts ably delineates between them, there are various ways of understanding the total work of art, but he argues convincingly that in each case it is connected with an ongoing political and aesthetic search for a ‘redemptive or utopian alternative’ (3). But this utopia is an ambiguous state for, not only is the total work of art explicitly connected with the experimental perspective of the avant-garde, it is also (as perhaps the term suggests) intricately linked with the notion of totalitarianism. The complex political intentions of the total work of art remain a recurring theme in Roberts’ book.
One of the particularly fascinating elements of this book is the need to stretch the usual chronological confines of the modernist avant-garde in a search for the origins of this concept. Indeed he returns right back to the eighteenth century with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Unsurprisingly he also recalls Richard Wagner whose Gesamtkunstwerk has cast such a long shadow over nineteenth- and twentieth-century art. But he also studies festivals which, according to Roberts, ‘manifest the social bond as such’ in their use of a multidisciplinary method (20) and returns to the ideas of the originator of the concept of the avant-garde, Henri Saint-Simon, whose proclamation of the social function of the artist first confirmed the avant-garde’s understanding that ‘art attains self-realization through its (self-sacrificial) transformation into faith or action’ (58).
After laying the historical foundations of his claims, Roberts spends part II reflecting on the spiritual nature of the total work of art and part III focusing on the political reimaginings of the concept. The former, of course, bases its conclusions in Wagner’s monumentally influential ideas which, Roberts’ suggests, ‘always meant a return to theatre’s sacred origins’ (105). As one would expect from a book that makes such a strong claim for an alternative narrative of modernism, Roberts’ conclusions are not without their contentious moments. At the end of part II, for example, he analyses Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud, figures, he claims, are polar opposites and yet the extremes meet in ‘their pursuit of a retotalized theatre, rational-discursive and irrational cruelty have the same goal of de-individuation’ (181). However his arguments are nonetheless consistently persuasive. Part III is the most interesting section, comparing the total work of art in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, thereby confirming the multiple definitions and interpretations of the total work of art, while validating his initial claim that this concept is inherently associated with totalitarianism.
There is much to admire in Roberts’ study of the total work of art and he convincingly makes the case for its importance. At times the book becomes simply a historical survey which does seem to somewhat negate his initial claim for originality. Furthermore, for a book that predominantly focuses on that vague behemoth ‘performance’, there is a notable absence of real performance analysis, preferring instead to focus on the overarching concept rather than specific performances or performance conditions. While there is some excellent use of primary sources and contemporaneous commentary, Roberts’ book also feels a little detached from other recent scholarly studies of historical avant-garde performance. There are a number of contemporary scholars who have determined to cross geographical or political boundaries in modernist studies, and it seems rather unfortunate that Roberts does not bring his own admirable study into dialogue with them. Despite these reservations, Roberts’ book provides a hugely insightful study of the total work of art. Most helpfully he uses this recurring motif as a way of breaking down conventional narratives about modernist politics, spirituality and aesthetic technique.