Community as Gesamtkunstwerk: Dick Ket's Self-Portraiture and the Debt of Epic Film.

This article examines the influence of early epic cinema, particularly Fritz Lang’s 1924 two-part film *Die Nibelungen* (The Nibelungs), on the self-portraiture of Dutch modernist painter Dick Ket (1902–1940). It argues that Ket’s paintings from the 1930s reflect his memory of the film’s Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) aesthetics—an idea popularized by Richard Wagner involving the synthesis of multiple art forms—especially its patterned mise-en-scène that subordinated the human figure to its environment as a metaphor for control and constraint. Ket’s self-portraits, created during his physical confinement due to a congenital heart defect, visually negotiate themes of individual agency, isolation, and resistance amid the rise of totalitarian regimes in Europe, contrasting with the monumental and propagandistic aesthetics of Nazi filmmakers like Leni Riefenstahl. While Ket’s work does not embody the totalizing synthesis of the Gesamtkunstwerk, it serves as a personal, introspective response to the political and cultural climate of interwar Europe, using cinematic memory to explore the tension between selfhood and external domination.