“If the ideas are complex it is because they often grapple with concepts that resist simplification.” It is important to make a distinction between “simplification” and “clarification.” It is not necessary to simplify in order to clarify—I would be suspicious of any ideas that could not be clarified.

I’d also posit that Apollonaire, Greenberg, Sontag, and Celant were influential not in spite of their prose, but in large part because they were capable of communicating their ideas clearly.

The problem at hand is not about difficult ideas being made simple, but simple ideas being made difficult.