Words of Wisdom about the avant-garde

"Conventionally, a work if art is considered to be the product of a different self from the one displayed in habitual action and ordinary living. A few courageous members of the avant-garde set out to extend the artistic, creative self until it displaced all guises of habit, social behavior, virture and vice. When our entire life stems from our one deepest self, the resulting personality is usually so startling and abnormal as to appear a mask or a pose. It is the ultimate paradox of human character. This was very much the case with Rousseau or Jarry, with Jacob and Satie; in each of their lives one feels a deep-seated force such as possesses a lunatic or a saint. Unity of personality is the most admired and the most victimized of all conditions, for it defies judgement."---Roger Shattuck, "The Banquet Years", about the precursors to the Dada-ists and Surrealists, the sort of non-defined artistic and social anarchists in Paris characterized by Alfred Jarry, Guillaume Apollinaire, and others. He talks about le Dounier Rousseau and Eric Satie, but I don't know that much about their personal lives to make that judgement.