Leszek Przyjemski - "Polski sytuacjonista"

Abstrakt

Leszek Przyjemski – ‘Polish situationist’

I analyze detournament in the work by Leszek Leonard Przyjemski – one of the basic strategy by situa-tionists. Przyjemski graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk in 1968 – in the year of the student revolt in Paris, where the Situationists celebrated their strategies as the biggest triumph. There is no hard evidence the artist does not provide any that he was directly inspired by those events. The analysis is therefore based on the similarity of the results. This revolt was directed against authority and oppression in both the capitalist and communist systems. The situational strategy was used by many artists, including for example Przemysław Kwiek, Marek Konieczny, Pawel Freisler, and Anastasius Wisniewski who cooperated with Przyjemski at the beginning of their careers. It was Przyjemski, though, who considered the situationist strategy as the basis of his artistic method which he used throughout his career. Situationist strategy includes the reversal of the vector of meanings. Detournament reveals itself also but not only through the use of comedy – through incompatibility of ideas and reality, most often through the reduction ad absurdum. In his artwork, humor is associated with reflec-tion. I describe the most important artwork by Przyjemski, and I analyze it in the context of detournament strategy. I also describe the significant shift in Przyjemski’s detournament in connection with the activities by other Situationists. The most important difference is the lack of set goals – social, general – in Przyjemski’s artwork other Polish artists followed the same idea. It was their response to the situation in which they found themselves in Poland.