Close the Doors, Lift the Curtain:
Wagnerism, Art Nouveau and the Interior Experience
Lecture by Dagmar Thielen
During the 19th century, the arts in Europe shifted from focusing on outward beauty and skill, to exploring the depths of the inner human experience. Painters, writers, musicians, and architects began to search for ways to express emotion, imagination, and interior life, believing that artworks could extend the present by shaping the future. At the forefront of this shift stood Richard Wagner, who brought music, staging, light, colour, and architecture together in a way that irrevocably influenced the arts.
This lecture looks at how Wagner’s immersive ideas of architecture, moving scenic landscapes, music and experience were echoed in Wagnerism, the artistic movement that later intertwined with the ideas and expressions of Symbolism and Art Nouveau and profoundly changed the goal and experience of art. By lifting the curtain on theatrical techniques and closing the doors of the Brussels’ interior, this lecture explores how the late 19th century invented new ways of experiencing space that still shape how we think about atmosphere, immersion and the feeling of experiencing “something higher than ourselves” in a work of art.
Dagmar Thielen (KU Leuven- Coventry University) is a a PhD researcher in Architectural History, studying Wagnerism, interiority, and the spatial imagination of the 19th century. She has previously published on the contemporary art, the Gesamtkunstwerk and The Ghent Altarpiece. In early 2025, she was awarded the Ludwig Prize for her work on Wagnerism. She is currently involved in the reconstruction of Richard Wagner’s Wandeldekorationen as part of a larger exhibition project.