Lehrveranstaltungen Online

The tradition of Gesamtkunstwerk conceived by the composer Richard Wagner is associated with wishing to immerse oneself in both a total aesthetic experience as well as in totalitarian politics. But how much of a free choice did modern design grant men and women from the second half of the nineteenth century until the mid-1930s? This course aims to explore the aesthetic and political dimension of modern design. Through theoretical texts addressing the subject of design and cultural sociology, we will explore questions such as: Did modern design lure the “new man” and “new woman” into accepting various political, social, professional, familial, gender, and physical self-identifications? Did it convince them they belonged to a nation or international brotherhood? Or that they were members of a respectable bourgeoisie or modest working class? Or part of a professional structure of authority and hierarchy? Or what counted as masculine and feminine, healthy and sick? Or did the Gesamtkunstwerk's modern design allow distinguished personalities “rich clients and artists” to cross geographical, political, social, family and gender frontiers? To that end, the seminar will include an analysis of fashion designs for the theater, political parades, Olympic games, theater settings, exhibition arrangements, interiors of banks, sanatoriums and private houses, and architecture of art schools, museums, department stores, starting with the Arts and Crafts movement in England and concluding with the Bauhaus in Germany.