In addition to predicting the sensual excesses of the student counterculture, Witkacy foresaw the rise of the modern dictator, the growth in the international power of Chinese Communism, and the attraction of Eastern mysticism for disenchanted youth in the West. And, in spite of the madcap, disorganized quality of much of his creative work, Witkacy was an uncannily accurate prophet. His writings also refer to illicit drugs and recreational sex, which he saw as hedonistic outlets for people living in fundamentally repressive societies. A foe of both Communism and fascism, Witkacy turned into a prophet of hedonism. Only moderately well known during his own time and almost completely suppressed during the early decades of Communist rule in Poland, Witkacy posthumously became the subject of a major revival in Poland, and increasingly often abroad, toward the end of the twentieth century. Underlying much of his work were the themes of individualism and the power of art as responses to a chaotic and disintegrating universe. The Polish artist, playwright, novelist, photographer, and philosopher Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939), who used the single name of Witkacy, produced a richly experimental and often surreal body of work in each of the several forms of expression he took up.
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