Back when I used to actually consider submitting art to competitions (photography, paintings or otherwise) it used to bug me no end when they asked for accompanying paragraphs to detail the meaning of the work. The work should speak for itself, I thought. It should not be judged on its accompanying spiel, but on the quality of art. Sadly, too often, that did not seem to be the case.
When walking through the Tate modern art gallery in London I was quite impressed by the number of artists who could make a plain coloured canvas sound like the most meaningful thing in the world, and really thought they’d missed their true calling - creative writing.