A theory I came up with is that postmodernist art functions as a make-work program for postmodernist critics. If the naive purpose of art is to communicate with your audience, then good art is art that communicates its ideas well. But if you're a self-serving critic you don't want good art, because good art speaks for itself. You want bad, incoherent art that requires a priestly caste of postmodernist critics to stand between the art and the audience as interpreter.

The book The Painted Word advances the same theory.