JR Irwin - the problem goes beyond scholars and academics. If you go to the UK Tate Modern, or the NY MoMa, they succeed in having incredibly clear and concise explanations that invite the viewer to consider the work, while other modern museums that shall remain un-named, insist on creating incredibly dense and unintelligable explanations that exlude the viewer from any consideration.

Personally I think it's done to cover a work's lack of artistic merit. When was the last time you saw a Lucien Freud or a Banksy, for example, accompanied by a page of nouns that read like the bastard child of a computer manual and a communist manifesto?

More to the point, who would tolerate it?

I don't know if I can agree on that, mainly because I'll be matriculating into a PhD program next spring. My reasons for wanting to conduct research have nothing to do with self validation or a need to have a purpose. My own research experience with monographs and periodicals has lead me to the conclusion that art writings are dry and difficult because their writers are rhetorically challenged. Simply put, many academics just do not know how to write. Too many scholars use "million dollar words" when a "five dollar word" will do. Too many scholars fail to realize the benefits of using varied sentence structure in proving a point, and thus take fifty pages to make a point when twenty will suffice. I also believe that the appearance of certain names in a monograph lend an artist or an argument an air of credibility. Has anyone else noticed the number of times the reknowned Rudi Fuchs has popped up in monographs from artists at the White Cube Gallery? How quickly Fuchs wrote something about Hirst's "For the Love of God" to give it credibility in all of its media frenzy?