Between Utopia and Prototype: Idea of Change in the Work of Katarzyna Kobro and Władysław Strzemiński

Abstract

The avant-garde maintains a dialectical relationship with history. On the one hand, it is oriented toward change, and on the other, it strives to establish an eternal now – a utopia, the achievement of which would end all history and the need for any further change. In this context, Yves-Alain Bois analyzes the historicism of Katarzyna Kobro and Władysław Strzemiński, concluding that the system they created, Unism, was destined to fail because, despite taking into account the workings of history, it did not break with the utopian ideal of unity, towards which art and the social world were ultimately intended to strive. This text is a polemic against this thesis and, at the same time, an expression of doubt regarding François Jullien's suggestions that utopian thinking, associated with projecting great change, is counterproductive and, in fact, counteracts the possibility of a genuine transformation of the world. In this text, I propose a pragmatic approach to the relationship between change and utopia, invoking the concept of the prototype for this purpose. I approach the work of Kobro and Strzemiński as successive iterations of the prototyping process, demonstrating the positive relationship between utopian vision and practical action in history.