“In those domains where human expression is not limited to the spontaneous act of showing, but seeks to embody itself in a form that resists the erosion of time—a form capable of sustaining the tension between origin and permanence, between impulse and elaboration—a well-known paradox imposes itself with disturbing regularity: the higher the degree of elaboration of a work, the smaller its audience tends to be. This is not a cultural whim or a statistical anomaly, much less a curse attributable to taste. Rather, it is a structural phenomenon that reveals a certain inevitable asymmetry between demand and reception. Some works were not made to be consumed, but to be confronted.

Excellence—when it deserves that name—is not offered under the logic of performance. It does not deliver immediate pleasure or seek to fulfill a soothing function. On the contrary, it imposes conditions: time, preparation, availability, even an active tolerance for discomfort. Contemporary culture, however, has domesticated attention to the point of turning it into a reflexive, almost involuntary gesture. The measure of value has shifted toward immediacy. What cannot be absorbed instantly is perceived as an obstacle, a waste of time, or a sign of arrogance. It is rejected not because it has been understood and dismissed, but because one has not had the patience to inhabit its difficulty. This does not mean, of course, that all accessible forms are without value. There are simplicities that are the result of long refinement, and there is clarity that does not come from impoverishment, but from rigor. However, such forms are exceptional, not the rule. The dominant pattern is different: ease of reception tends to coincide with a reduction in formal complexity. What conforms too readily to the codes of the majority often ends up losing depth. It produces no transformation and demands no response; it leaves no mark. It dissolves as quickly as it is consumed.

That the trivial dominates the public space should come as no surprise to anyone. It is, in a way, the logical result of a cultural machinery that privileges visibility over quality, number over meaning. What is truly disconcerting is that, despite everything, the valuable persists. And it persists without needing to impose itself. It does not need seduction strategies, it does not resort to marketing artifice, nor does it adapt to the dictates of algorithms. It remains, sometimes in the shadows, because it continues to respond to a need that, although unspoken, has not disappeared: the need to be challenged, to think beyond the given, to encounter something that cannot be resolved with an automatic gesture.”