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It's true that Paul was a far greater fan and supporter of the avant-garde than John was, at least in the mid-sixties. John had serious issues regarding his middle class upbringing (hence the fallacy of his song 'Working Class Hero') This led to him self-consciously dismissing the avant-garde quite early on as being 'a bit bourgeois'. The far more solidly working class Paul on the other hand had no such hang ups, and forged direct ties to the Indica Gallery, I.T, the Arts Lab, the UFO club, etc, into which he put his own time and money in order to keep them active, as well as championing their cause to a broader audience on television interviews. The Magical Mystery Tour film, in essence a Macca solo project, explored and attempted to popularise a number of ideas he was being exposed to at places like the Arts Lab. And he's right about working through a lot of these ideas earlier than John's Revolution 9, usually in anonymous collaboration with figures like Miles and John Dunbar. Although a number of these projects may have ended up being quite naive in their outcome, they were definitely quite sincere in their inspiration. There's a chapter in Barry Miles' biography of Macca that goes into his infatuation with the avant-garde during this period in fascinating detail.
John's reservations about the avant-garde only really broke when he met Yoko, but on reflection seems more the result of his infatuation with her (as well as a bid to free himself from the legacy of The Beatles) than with the avant-garde itself. Even when he moved to America and became more involved in their counterculture, his interest was far more focused on its political activism side than it was experimentation in art. As a result, I think its therefore true to say that, from the very beginning, Paul had a far more instinctive interest in the avant-garde than could be said for John. And even when John did begin to embrace it (as Jennthebenn mentions) there's little real evidence of any avant-garde experimention going on within his solo output outside of that provided by Yoko. Plastic Ono Band may have been a far better album than McCartney, or Ram, but was it really any more experimental? On that score you'd have to say that George Harrison's early solo output, like 1968's Wonderwall Music and 1969's Electronic Sound albums eclipse both, and tend to betray the flippancy of his previously mentioned 'avant garde a clue' quote.
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