Sztuka New Age

Describes the growing popularity of New Age art in Poland in the 1990s, defining New Age not as an alternative culture or subculture but as a bricolage of elements drawn from ancient, medieval and contemporary sources combining the languages of physics, psychotherapy and the Internet. She notes the presence of motifs drawn from Buddhism, Taoism, Native American and African belief systems, and the qualities of inconclusiveness, ephemerality, eclecticism, ambivalence, pluralism, fluidity and a preference for images over words as its characteristics. She surveys the paths of the culture of the Other, forbidden and counter-cultures and culture for sale, including the marketing of dream-catchers, Tarot cards, talismans and occult paraphernalia, within the New Age movement which covers every area of life, and identifies the blurring of the distinction between art and non-art, elements of folk art, a preference for ecological, natural and religious motifs and inspiration drawn from ancient cultures and ethnic art as some of its characteristics.