Dear Prodigal,
You always challenge me to look harder at myself and my deeper motivations, which I really appreciate!!
I feel a healthy dose of Uranus because: I was the first in my entourage to purchase a digital Yamaha Clavinova for everyday practice when I moved to France, even though everybody was like, stay with the "real thing", I worked for a Silicon Valley company in the early days of linguistic programming (and loved it) right after college, I made a scripted webcam movie when it first came out, and when the Canon HD cameras came out, we were all making HD videos. Today, I own everything from iPad, iPhone, iPod, Mac Book Pro, Prolight flashlight kits, Zoom recorders, Microphones, mixer boards, etc. Of course, compared to one friend, who own everything that the Apple store has ever put out, I'm pretty even-tempered, even nontechnical.
There is something ironic in the phrase "the tradition of the avant-garde".. Uranus breaks with tradition, and while the iconoclasts you name were all Uranian in their day, they are securely established in the canon of our time. That you admire these artists and thinkers today is no indication that you would have been open to them as a contemporary. In fact, it is difficult to say what constitutes innovation in an age where the so-called avant-garde is fairly mainstream. Do you see yourself as a reformer?
Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between the Mars/Aries/1stHouse energy and the Uranian energy. Both tend to gravitate towards the new.
That's all I have time for right now. Maybe I'll say more later.
Of course there is a "tradition"
! And you are absolutely right. It's not so much about innovation, but independent thinking and unrelenting search for truth, which almost went against the tides of mainstream and threatened the powers-that-be. It cannot be uniquely tied to that one planet Uranus. There's a good amount of Mercury and Pluto. And to answer your question very honestly, I think that in searching truth, my goal is not to be isolated or an outcast, nor are most of my friends who are persisting in the experimental scene, but it often becomes a by-product. I do have the goal of making people think for themselves, which you can call "reforming", but not "reforming" for the sake of newness alone.
Uranus didn't come out of a rock. His father was Saturn, ha! If you look at the sign Aquarius, there is the esoteric ruler Saturn and the modern ruler Uranus. I find that fascinating when I observe the psyches of an Aquarius persons, who often do not readily exhibit the lightening quick, Uranian energy, but are somewhat "reserved" and "withdrawn". There's that constant tension that makes them absolutely fascinating. In the act of creating, you have to symbolically kill the father "tuer le père," but once you have made it out on your own, there's is a return for your creative roots (which was the source of that original impetus), thus the birth of a new cycle.
I know what you mean about the "avant-garde" musicians becoming the poster boys of record label, or experimental, street artists being integrated into art fairs and commercial galleries. When you are trying to do something in utter honesty, you sometimes (and it's always a fluke) get picked up by someone who's principally motivated by greed (or shall we say profit), your message gets dampened, and the monetary rewards only serve as a narcotic, so that you can keep churning out the same work and convert it into a product. This is one of the things that I've been thinking a lot in the last few years, whether I want to continue collaborating with gallerists, or really commit to setting up my own structure (and structure in the material world is my Achilles' Heel, even without knowing that I had a 12th house Saturn in detriment...)
Can you see in my chart if I'm able to successfully set up my own structure, platform?? And when is the propitious time to do it? I'd really like to work on my Saturnine qualities this time around...
Another thing that I've always wanted to do was artbook publishing. I think this is a 9th house matter and I have an empty 9th. But I've had this idea since I was a small kid, and wonder if anything in that direction can be seen in the chart?