As the old saying goes: if you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, you can baffle them with your bullshit. This statement can be applied most notably to the "artist's statement". For those not familiar with this format, an artist's statement is generally a one-page explanation offered up by a visual artist to give context to a body of work. As most visual artists are horrendous writers incapable of identifying the subject of any given sentence, the artist's statement has become the bane of curators and art juries alike. Here's an example that found it's way into my inbox the other day. The names of the guilty parties have been removed:

"Nameless Artist's new series of paintings at Nameless Gallery explores a relationship between figurative and abstraction in an attempt to meld archetypal probing and emotional automatism with a meditative figural base. His figures seem situated in some brightly coloured realm that is both landscape and mindscape. Iconic strawberries and near invisible scrawlings of a lucky Chinese cat blend with globs of pastel coloured drips and homages to Vermeer and Ingres. Reflective gazes shine out from atmospheric tints toward colour fields, graffiti-like paint stick smears, and varied brushstrokes."

Ummmmm....wha? Surely this artist's statement alone is proof that this poor painter desperately requires better ventilation in his studio. Inhaling all those nasty solvents has clearly taken a toll.