The Avante-Garde
“More than a hundred years ago some French bohemians decreed that the purpose of art was to shock the middle classes. It may have been a great idea back then. But these days the middle classes aren’t paying attention. They’re all on Jerry Springer or Ricki Lake, talking about their cross-dressing experiences or sex with the baby-sitter. Cutting-edge artists have to watch this stuff in despair and complain about the state of American culture even as they demand more grant money to do their cutting-edge art. In the future this spectacle of the middle classes shocking the avant-garde will probably become the textbook definition of Postmodernism.”
-the avante-garde according to Brad Holland in The Atlantic Monthly


