The Avant-Garde?

The avant-garde means people engaging in forms of artistic expression that are as yet untested. It's a military term, and it simply means the unfortunate souls that are the first to go into battle. You can do absolutely outrageous things and have them be installed in public places and it'll generate a certain amount of civic controversy but nothing even remotely close to what would have happened 60 years ago. The sort of arts have been declawed in a certain sense.