Higgins and Marinetti Interpretation 9/6/10

In Dick Higgins "Horizons" he mentions his idea of what it means to be truly avant-garde. I enjoyed this article because he gives the meaning of being modern and connects it to art and our perceptions of art. "The desire is part of the ongoing process of the fusion--its projection onto us and into the future, and through it we come to know ourselves culturally with ever-expanding circles of information and experience. Thus, any art which offers such fusion with new horizons is the only one which can be relied on to offer a new intermesh of our horizons with new ones" (Higgins, p. 9). Avant-garde seems strange to the mainstream because it is just an evolution of our thoughts and the thoughts of the artist. I enjoyed how the author explains art as being a sort of language and when an artist puts his own horizons into a masterpiece we as the viewers are given the opportunity to interpret the painting and what the artist is saying anyway we like. He mentions fusing horizons with past horizons which in return will create new horizons and a new avant-garde. After reading Higgins and F.T. Marinetti I pose the question, how is the combining of horizons through art and its receiver the same as being a futurist? How can we grow to become modern without learning from the past? I appreciated both articles because they give a new perspective on the meaning of being modern and to be avant-garde.