There seem to be basic, agreed upon parameters for what defines specific forms of art. A painting on a canvas seems to be traditionally understood as being complete without anything else to it. That's not to say that it must be this way. Artistic forms seem to solidify over time, although always in flux. But I don't think the artist statement is some kind of cutting edge evolution of the painting. It draws the viewer away from the painting. Evolution in the craft of paining would be something more like the use of three dimensional texture within the confines of paint; mixing paint with materials that add noticeable three dimensional texture, for instance; sand, or something. Or scraps of literal garbage. I'm still way more interested in something like that than I am in artist statements.

Unless the artist wishes to comment, explain, expand upon their work, an artist's statement should not be mandatory. What we see in galleries today, with the artist statement written and ever-present in the gallery is the result of the academic formula of MFA programs. I myself am a graduate of an MFA program, and the artist statement seemed to me redundant. Others can write about the work of the artist. An artist's statement takes the mystery away from the artist's intent. The meaning of the art must always be pregnant within the art itself. Each individual observer will unlock it according to her/his personal development.

Roni Horn finds interesting ways around this when she lectures. One lecture she only played music, another she read some poems about water. I wonder what picasso would write in his artist statement or Edvard munch. It's new phenomenon that makes sense for some conceptual work with little visual interest. Sometimes it's interesting to know just a little bit what the artist was thinking or where she or he is coming from. If the process is unique that could be intersting to know. But in general I would keep an artist statment very short and straight forward. no fancy language. pretentious words only make you look fake and foolish.

Surrealist writing is a bit different than making a conceptual artist statements. It is not meant to explain anything. On the OP, Carrington said:

There are things that are not sayable. That’s why we have art.
— Leonora Carrington

Every artist’s job is to transfigure a genuine experience into a cultural good. The artist will not intellectually process the experience to reach its comprehension at the universality level; he will record it in the most eminently communicable way possible. Of course sometimes it’s not that easily communicated. Sometimes it can be so subtle that, no matter how hard he tries to be clear, it won’t be very clear — you’ll have to crack your head a little to know what he’s talking about. Not to mention the fact that to understand his experience, you will need to have sufficient maturity or imagination — if not, you will understand nothing.

It is also possible for the artist, in addition to fueling cultural memory with his art, making it a vehicle of intelligence and transforming art into a concept. He can do that, although he is not obligated. There are artists who worked with a very clear intellectual awareness of what they were doing, such as Henry James, who wrote an explanatory preface for each of his novel. Sometimes the preface was even better than the book. Others would not even be able to explain how they did the book, because their job is not to explain, but to do. Once done, that genuine, true experience is recorded. Hence you can easily distinguish what is genuine experience from mere copied experience, stereotype repetition (which is a thing that has little memory content and is just word repetition). The artist’s job is to make these experiences available to other human beings. He can go on meditating and deepening it if he wants to, but it is not required for him to do so. Not everyone can be all things.

Surrealist writing is a bit different than making a conceptual artist statements. It is not meant to explain anything. On the OP, Carrington said:

There are things that are not sayable. That’s why we have art.
— Leonora Carrington — Olivier5

She also did surrealist writing. Are you familiar with surrealism?

Are you familiar with surrealism? — frank

A little. Surrealist writing is part of the effort to shake our world view, to rediscover reality with new eyes. To allow a bit of folly back into our positivist, atomistic modern world. It was — in France at least — a response to the positivism of Auguste Comte (a naïve, quasi-mythical materialist belief in science and technology as saviors, as inherently good, and as the one and only way to truth, what is now called scientism). The first world war had shown that science and technology could be used to pulverize people by the thousand. I believe that somehow, the surrealists knew that Europe — with its hubris, its power-drunkness, its misplaced trust in cold, heartless rationality, its ever-growing technology, its ancestral hatreds revived by modern nationalistic zeal — that this continent was heading to a moral catastrophe. It was vital to err out of the beaten nationalistic and scientific tracks, urgent to find new ways to write, to paint and to think...

Didn’t work, unfortunately. The catastrophe still happened.

There are artists who worked with a very clear intellectual awareness of what they were doing, such as Henry James, who wrote an explanatory preface for each of his novel. Sometimes the preface was even better than the book. Others would not even be able to explain how they did the book, because their job is not to explain, but to do. — Rafaella Leon

Good post. Yet, sometimes the explanatory note ruins the novel, in that it restricts its meaning(s) to one single facet or dimension. A work of art functions at many different levels. Whatever you can say about it is a always a simplification.