Postmodernism, Avant-Garde, and Neo-Dadaism: The Legacy of Boguslaw Schaeffer

The main topic of my chapter is the neo-avant-garde and neo-Dadaist influence and inspiration in the work of Boguslaw Schaeffer—one of the most interesting artists of Central Europe after the Second World War. Like prominent artists of the “classical” avant-gardes (e.g., Artaud, Schwitters, Duchamp, or Klein), Schaeffer worked extensively in many fields of artistic expression: he was best known as a composer and music theorist, but he also wrote plays, created graphic art, and practiced philosophy. In my essay I would like to show that Schaeffer is essentially a continuation of the pre-war avant-garde tradition. However, this is not a simple imitation of the old artistic language. On the contrary, the Polish composer takes techniques and forms typical of avant-garde and Dadaist aesthetics (e.g., collage, provocation, palimpsest, surrealist poetry, transformation and repetition of everyday language, poetics of the absurd) and transforms them into his own, independent form.