Cutting Edge of Art

Image Credit: 'Blown Away' - Maxell

Beyond the cliche of 'cutting edge'; who is looking for it and where are examples in the 21st century?
Digital technology allows millions to create and share but who cares about today's visionary art if there is any? The definition that high-art is a function of capitalism has persisted since the 1970s: value now widely accepted as being only measured by price and no longer an area for discussion on its own. Beyond technology, and fragmentation where to find the 'shock-of-the-new' art movement as described below out there? This is quite different from 'shock-for-shock's sake' which is on a sliding scale of bad-taste open to anyone prepared to face the consequences and without transformative qualities.

"Every age creates as an utopian image, a nostalgic 'rear-view' mirror-image of itself. Which puts it thoroughly out of touch with the present.

The present is the enemy. The present is only faced in any generation by the artist.

The artist is prepared to study the present as his material because it is the area of challenge to the whole sensory-life and therefore it is anti-utopian. It is a world of anti-values.

And the artist who comes into contact with the present produces an avant-garde image that is terrifying to contemporaries."

Marshall McLuhan
TV Broadcast: Mailer vs. McLuhan, The Summer Way, CBC 1968