"The writing of artists' statements is a comparatively recent phenomenon beginning in the 1990s."
. . .
"Levine & Rule collated and analysed thousands of gallery press releases, published by e-flux since 1999, in an attempt to dissect and understand the peculiar language of the professional art world. It has since become one of the most widely circulated pieces of online cultural criticism."
Peculiar language indeed.
Also, the article on outsider art was interesting as well.
I'm not saying artist statements and formal art culture practices have no value. They just seem to me to be purposely created bafflegab to exclude the everyday people who I guess are not the target audience.
Myself, even just putting titles on my photography grates on me at times. There's probably some art practitioners and write-ups about or by them that prefer to leave things totally up to the viewer to interpret. I read something the other day about a painter that gave up titles and just used numbers.