4) challenges

Particularly in these usages: “challenges the viewer…" or “challenges ideas of…." Very few things are genuinely challenging, particularly when the art crowd is so very blasé about being challenged.

10) haunting

This is a popular shortcut to making it sound like a work is really good if there is not that much more to say about it.

16) informed by

To me, when a writer says that an artist's work was “informed by" a certain set of ideas, that can be translated to, “What this show was about was unclear to me—but then I read the press release and it said the artist had read something."

18) interrogates

This is so common it hurts every time I read it. It makes art sound literally torturous.

24) profound

As a rule, it seems that artworks aren't just moving these days; they are “profoundly moving." An artist doesn't just get it; she has a “profound understanding" of what's going on. So much profundity out there! This is similar to just adding an exclamation point to things for emphasis!And so the list goes on. The trouble is, once you remove these 30 key words from the guff-writer's lexicon, what else can they say?