The Art of Confusion: How Markets Transformed Exclusion into Value

Artists as Accomplices of the System

For a long time, we have cultivated the romantic image of the artist as a rebel, a figure capable of resisting power and exposing its hypocrisies. But in today’s ecosystem, that mythology has become a convenient illusion. Most contemporary artists are no longer in opposition to the system, they are part of it. They don’t challenge it, they feed it. They don’t critique it, they adapt to it. And in many cases, they exploit it with the same logic as those who control it.

This complicity doesn’t necessarily stem from cynicism, but from adaptation. The art system has imposed a survival model that rewards conformity to the language of incomprehension. The artist who produces readable, direct, openly political or emotional work is often dismissed as naïve. Conversely, the cryptic, conceptually opaque piece, supported by a pseudo-philosophical theoretical discourse, is celebrated as “mature,” “self-aware,” “necessary.” Complexity is measured not by the depth of thought, but by the degree of obscurity.

Thus, many artists quickly learn the grammar of power: they write hermetic statements, construct “curatorially appealing” projects, and adopt intellectual postures calibrated to the language of institutions. The artwork becomes a pretext for narrative, a material support for discourse. Art is produced not to communicate, but to appear intelligent. Content becomes secondary to the rhetoric that surrounds it.

The deeper problem is that this behavior has become internalized. Artists no longer pretend to conform, they believe in it. They have absorbed the logic of self-referentiality as art’s natural condition. They work not for an audience, but for a network of insiders; not for understanding, but for citation; not for dialogue, but for theoretical consistency. Art becomes a language spoken among the few, a closed circuit where the work serves to consolidate positions rather than generate experiences.

In this drift, even rebellion has been neutralized. Works that present themselves as critiques of the system end up as its most profitable décor. Provocation is anticipated, integrated, and budgeted by institutions. The “radical” artist becomes a format, a functional figure sustaining the system’s progressive image. Dissent turns into a cultural service: managed, exhibited, and sold.

And yet, behind this polished complicity lies an invisible wound, the inability to truly affect reality. The artist who accepts the language of aesthetic power loses their critical function, stops producing friction, and becomes intellectual decoration. What was once a political gesture becomes an aesthetic sign; what was once risk becomes quotation.

The fault, perhaps, is not individual but systemic. The market, curators, institutions, and academies have built a model in which survival depends on conformity. But every time an artist agrees to speak only the language that grants them visibility, every time they abandon clarity in exchange for legitimacy, they help strengthen the wall that separates art from its audience.

The artist, who should be the one to break languages apart, has become their first defender. And until this complicity is recognized for what it is, every so-called “aesthetic revolution” will remain nothing more than an exercise in style, another performance comfortably housed within the museum of contemporary conformism.