Which means those authorities were shaped by the time and the environment they belonged to. If, within a framework of inheritance, particularly in techniques, their voice should be taken as a Bible. However, in a world of innovation, thoughts and ideas from such authorities are generally outdated.
The time is shaped by the current generation of young people. Young people are the voice of their own; among them, only a rare few who don’t agree with the current narration and take action will take a new influence, if, luckily, a paradigm shift.
There is a fact that we are now in a transitional time, following the first wave of globalization to modernity, in the arts as well. The world witnessed Max Weber’s theory that rationality stimulates modernity. Under rationality, there is industrialisation and commercialization, and then there is capitalism. Notably, the assembly line, the epitome of effectiveness as a methodology to realize above them, is working out of the factory, actually, permeating every corner of our lives, such as the education system, evaluation system, workplace, etc... Even in thoughts, people accept the second-hand knowledge, and believe it, take it, to shape themselves.
Arts is an outlier of such an assembly line, due to its nature. However, it doesn’t mean every artist is an outlier; some of them are also institutionalized.
Art in the modern world, repositioned by Duchamp, is a representative of the pioneers, rather than a traditional, unreachable noble thing that can only be possessed by noble people. Then, Dadaism and Fluxus occupied the new world after the end of World War II. Since then, the art has undergone its modernization, which is still shaping today’s world.
However, today’s world is without the avant-garde. There is only pioneering.
There is no standard on what pioneering is and how to achieve it. It is a vision for the future, in other words, a person who strongly believes in what he/she would like to achieve as their own belief over the years, when the market isn’t popular. If such a pursuit is followed by a small number of professions, there will be a small wave; such a wave can be regarded as pioneering after many years, when more people accept it.
Therefore, the “pioneering” is a foresight and a belief for the future on where the direction will be. It requires a person’s firm persistence; however, such insistence over time can only come from a person’s inner belief, which means their own pursuit, a very private pursuit.
Nonetheless, it doesn’t mean all private pursuits being polished over the years will become pioneering. It must be placed into the current market — not necessarily the popular one — because only practice brings feedback, and feedback leads to reflection, and then to improvement.
For the creator, pioneering is a process; for the audience, it is a delayed outcome. For the current success, if there is an ambitious pursuit, it can be realized step by step over time, nourishing silently, albeit with some compromises in the market.