True Art Is Incomprehensible is defined as Art should be impossible for ordinary people to understand. That's from the Laconic entry for it, which was a lot more concise than the main page for it at the moment. The main page was declared No On-Page Examples and locked after it kept attracting complaining in the description. What's left of the page is a single sentence stub that fails the number one rule about tropes, describing it in detail.

The wick check shows that locking the page as a single sentence stub was the wrong call.

Summary of Wick Checks Are Incomprehensible

• 4/74 were correct per the laconic descripiton... if you can call it that. (5.4%)
• 18/74 still consisted of complaining in some form, which was what the example sectionectomy wanted to avoid. (24.32%)
• 7/74 were redundant with another Audience Reaction in some way. (9.45%)
• 8/74 were misplaced In-Universe wicks. (10.84%)
• 28/74 were zero context examples or potholes. (37.83%)
• 9/74 were multiple cases or unclear. (12.16%)

Locking the page as a single sentence stub only attracted more ZCEs or complaining off-page, as it doesn't give a proper explanation of what the trope is. I don't think this can be saved by expanding the definition when looking at the history of editors using it to complain about artists they don't like. When this trope was tagged In-Universe on work pages, I found them to be neutral. There are still misplaced wicks in YMMV though. So we have to look at other options.

Possible Solutions

• Cut the trope entirely. I don't think expanding the defintion is on the table here. A salting to the Permanent Red Link Club is not likely but I have seen people use it as a pothole in the style of Buffy Speak in at least 2 wicks checked. That may need some discussion.
• Disambiguate between Postmodernism, True Art Is Angsty, Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory, Mind Screw, What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?, Viewers Are Geniuses, Design Student's Orgasm, Word Salad Lyrics, Quirky Work, and Le Film Artistique, which are the related tropes listed on the page. On the page it's listed as Widget Series, but that got renamed to Quirky Work in another TRS thread.
• Split off a new trope for In-Universe cases, as I found that most of the non YMMV wicks on the related page were mostly neutral on that part and could be salvaged.
• I know this is the most unlikely, but the last option is to send the trope back through TLP to get a better definition and make it In-Universe Examples Only, as In-Universe wicks were mostly neutral as mentioned earlier.

I'll also accept any other solutions not listed.

• YMMV.Braid
  • The game initially follows a very simple premise, in which the princess likes you and you have to save her. Later chapters make the narrative much more confusing by implying that she is actually either a victim of Tim's stalking, a representation of oppressed or desired women everywhere, a constellation or an atomic bomb.
  • Jonathan Blow has gone on record saying that you can't take one element of Braid and say that that's what the game's all about. He even said that he was more trying to share "a set of feelings and situations" than a story. The first example is correct, but the second example could be placed in Trivia.Braid under Word of God instead.
• YMMV.Easy Rider
  • After a preview screening, Columbia Pictures' chief executive Leo Jaffe stood up, hailing, "I don't know what the fuck this picture means, but I know we're going to make a fuck of a lot of money." Correct, and properly describes an example of the audience reaction.
• YMMV.Hackers
  • More straightforward than most; the abstracted visual depictions of hacking are meant to be from the perspective of the hackers, as a way to illustrate the way the characters in the movie interpret what would otherwise be boring, uninterrupted lines of programming that most audiences would find dull. The blocky grid that houses the Garbage file was chosen to evoke the image of New York's city streets and buildings to suggest connections and locations as the characters relate them to hacking. Compare to TRON's visualization of the interior of a computer via The Grid. The city grid to circuit board transitions also hearken back to Koyaanisqatsi. Correct, and properly defines how it is an example according to the Laconic description.
• YMMV.Talking Heads
  • "I Zimbra" from Fear of Music was designed to be the musical equivalent of Dada. All of the words used are completely gibberish that don't translate to anything, with the marvel of the song being how well the nonsensical lyrics coagulate into an actually enjoyable listen. Correct, though it looks to be gushing.

• YMMV.AFI
  • Try to figure out what their short film Clandestine is about. Just try. Appears to be a potshot. There is also a commented out wick of True Art Is Angsty on the page.
• YMMV.Can
  • God knows what "Peking O" and "Aumgn" are supposed to mean, musically or otherwise. See also the Nightmare Fuel page. Appears to be a potshot towards the creator.^{Nightmare Fuel citations in question} "Aumgn", a haunting track driven by Schmidt's weird vocal sounds. "Peking O": at a certain point the music sounds neurotic and Suzuki starts yelling freakish sounding gibberish, much like someone Go Mad from the Revelation.
• YMMV.Can You See The Words
  • Come on, she's an art student. The plotless first few weeks of the blog basically run on this trope. Potshot towards the creator of the work, which was why the main page for this trope got locked.
• YMMV.David Sylvian
  • This is the general consensus about his album Manafon, which is truly divisive. Some consider it a masterpiece, others consider it pretentious noise. Mentions use of the trope as complaining.
• YMMV.Empire 1964
  • Pretty hard to say if it even is art, at this point... Very likely that the YMMV page for this work was only made to add this example to complain, as this is the only example listed on that subpage.
• YMMV.Final Fantasy
  • As the series progressed, plots became increasingly complex and convoluted... and the individual games got more and more critical praise. VII is considered one of the greatest games of all time, nevermind that its plot is very confusing and was not translated very well to boot. Subverted with some later games; critics and fans have begun to single out poor and confusing plotlines as a weakness of the series. While neutral, it mentions audiences complaining about the appearance of this trope.
• YMMV.Fur Fighters
  • The Quackenheim Museum which is literally full of pretentious as hell art, as well as some blatant egocentrism from General Viggo. Potshot towards the creator of the work.
• YMMV.The Green Elephant
  • Definitely one of the most bizarre movies you'll ever see. Appears to be a Take That! to the creator.
• YMMV.Hard To Be A God
  • One part of the problem with German's adaptation. Even setting aside the nauseating level of naturalism, it's very hard to make sense of what is going on. Only consists of complaining.
• YMMV.House S 5 E 03 Adverse Events
  • Both Dr. House and Dr. Taub regard the patient as an artist without talent after reviewing a selection of his paintings. The visual agnosia doesn't make the patient Giftedly Bad, it just impairs his ability to paint people and landscapes in a representational manner. When he's not afflicted by the agnosia, the patient's paintings can be described as competent, and good enough that someone would plausibly hire him to paint a portrait. So maybe House and Taub think Brandon's paintings are too commercial. True Art needs to look original, and so representational art is not true art because it looks like things that already exist. YMMV page likely made just to insert this. It starts out neutral, but the last two sentences are subjective.
• YMMV.Killer 7
  • No need to explain that. Likely a potshot towards the creator. Also a ZCE.
• YMMV.Kingdom Hearts
  • A lot of the plot tends to fall into this territory, 3D in particular. Singles out Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], one of the more controversial games in the series.
• YMMV.Mother 2017
  • A number of critics seem to enjoy the movie more because it's deliberately made to be unconventional and allegorical and leave viewers confused. Seems to be complaining about critics liking the movie.
• YMMV.Neon Genesis Evangelion
  • It's also been accused of having this mindset, particularly from haters with the opposite mindset. Solely consists of complaining.
• YMMV.Persona Disappearing Dreams
  • Most of Minoru's work, which seems to only make sense to her. Potshot towards a character.
• YMMV.Pet Shop Boys
  • "The Sound Of The Atom Splitting", and It Couldn't Happen Here (the movie).
  • Many fans didn't like the sound shift from their characteristic electronic-pop style to a more rock, guitar based sound in their album Release. While the "Home and dry" music video amounted to camera footage of rodents on the London Underground, which didn't help the success of Release much. First example is ZCE, the second example appears to be complaining about They Changed It, Now It Sucks!
• YMMV.Sonic Youth
  • Not as much as some rock bands, but an awful lot of listeners have reported having difficulty comprehending Daydream Nation on their first several listens to it - its length and the abrasiveness of many of its songs probably don't help on this count. Newcomers often find their earlier works EVOL and Sister somewhat less impenetrable, though, and later works like Washing Machine and Murray Street are also often more easily comprehensible. On the other hand, Daydream Nation is almost universally considered their best album, which circles back to this trope again. Uses complainy adjectives. The last sentence doesn't make sense in context if it reads like Broken Base.
• YMMV.Thirty Hs
  • It certainly fails as a fanfic, but does it actually fail as a piece of literature? Time will tell... First part is complainy.

• YMMV.Action 52
  • About the only thing that can possibly justify the existence of Timewarp Tickers, other than... well, you know...Could be rewritten as a wick for Quirky Work, as What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs? is currently being merged with that trope.
• YMMV.Doom Patrol
  • Morrison and Pollack. Of course, things start to make a good deal more sense if you love esoterica, Burroughs, Borges, dada, Surrealism, Kabbalah, and identity and gender politics. Potholed earlier in the Genius Bonus example^Earlier... Genius Bonus: Morrison's run references a lot of esoterica (see True Art Is Incomprehensible below), and additional references include things like the Utraquist heresy of the Catholic Church., and could be merged with that wick instead.
• YMMV.Miley Cyrus
  • She plays the trope for all it's worth with her 2013-2014 live performances and appearances, and her MTV Unplugged performance from 2014. People in dancing horse suits, rainbow, unicorn, and teddy bear costumes, Miley's often provocative and/or colorful costumes and outfits, even much of the pyro and screen projections. Her friend Cheyne Thomas dressed in a "sexy Santa" outfit at Jingle Ball 2013 also counts. She promises more in her Bangerz tour of 2014.
  • In 2014, she debuted her very surrealistic, structural pop art^note strategically and conceptually gluing things to other things in an exhibit titled "Dirty Hippie". A lot of thought did go into it, but the result does qualify as a Mind Screw. Both examples could be replaced with Mind Screw.
• YMMV.OFF
  • Due to the fact that this game is a Widget Series and that Mortis Ghost doesn't really explain anything of what's going on at all. Could be merged with the Quirky Work example instead.
• YMMV.The Knife
  • Trawling through the comments on SongMeanings.net will give you thousands of interpretations for each song.
    • Funnily enough, Swedish critics (and fans) increasingly tend to find them Anvilicious - but due partly to Popcultural Osmosis Failure and Swedish politics being a bit to the left of US politics to start with, YMMV on how much of that carries over to non-Swedish listeners. Misused, if you can call it that. Avoided Weblinks Are Not Examples by not linking to Song Meanings, but the second indentation appears to be a Justifying Edit when Anvilicious could be used instead.
• YMMV.Kurt Cobain
  • Cobain himself admitted that even he wasn't entirely sure what some of his lyrics were about. Actually Word of God.
• YMMV.Modest Mouse
  • Their most critically acclaimed album, The Moon & Antarctica, is also probably their most mindscrewy. Oddly enough, it's mostly because they balance on a precipice between "oblique" and "foggy as London". A common theme on all of their albums. Could be rewritten as Quirky Work.

• YMMV.The Simpsons S 9 E 3 Lisas Sax
  • Homer put it best.
    Homer: (watching Twin Peaks, where a man is dancing tango with a horse in the middle of the night with a traffic light hanging off a single tree) Brilliant! Ha ha ha... I have absolutely no idea what's going on.

• YMMV.Candi
  • The motto of Professor Fitzgibbons, who resents that Candi's art assignments are easily understood. Actually In-Universe.
• YMMV.Dexter
  • The plot of the fourth book revolves around the antagonists' efforts at art with dead bodies. In-Universe, the antagonists try to exploit this.
• YMMV.Fresh Meat
  • The David Hockney drawing in JP's room. Kingsley thinks it's a baby sitting under a tree; JP, true to form, thinks it's a man wanking. Actually conversed In-Universe.
• YMMV.I Capture The Castle
  • In-universe, Jacob Wrestling. And how! Several plot points revolve around this.
    • Subverted with the novel Mortmain starts to write during the course of this one. His children think he's either doing this trope or else having another Creator Breakdown because he seems to be endlessly fiddling with bits of childish rubbish, but actually he's trying to write a novel entirely from the perspective of a very young child. (A Shout-Out to James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.) Explicitly mentions that it's In-Universe, but it's listed on the YMMV page. The YMMV page has a mixture of misplaced main page tropes such as this one.
• YMMV.JAGS 09 E 18 What If
  • Harriet has a very valuable painting in her mansion, which Bud thinks should be in a museum. Mikey, on the other hand, thinks the painting looks like "roadkill." Actually In-Universe. The page was later cut, but this will be preserved for archival purposes and won't count towards the wick count percentage.
• YMMV.Kaeloo
  • The Let's Play Art Class episode was a big Take That! against this.
  Mr. Cat: This is a mere yoghurt. But place it on a pedestal, and add a signature, and it becomes art.

• YMMV.Now And Then
  • Samantha's books, according to the other girls. Appears to be In-Universe.
• YMMV.These New Puritans
  • Their lyrics feature references to everything from numerology to pre-Socratic philosophy. The very music of Hidden also seems designed to invoke this. Invoked trope.

• YMMV.Beetlejuice
  • Delia's sculptures. ZCE
• YMMV.C 0 DA
  • Broken Base: To fans of the Elder Scrolls, it's either everything that's great about Kirkbride's writing, or it's everything that's bad about Kirkbride's writing, with almost no in between. Potshot towards the creator in a complainy example of Broken Base.
• YMMV.Family Guy
  • Diane Simmons' short movie Lint invokes this.
  • Stewie's music video he made for Susie.
    Brian: I'm not following the storyline here.
    Stewie: Shut up!

• VideoGame.Interesting NP Cs
  • Doing It for the Art: Carmella is a necromancer who raises the dead as some sort of performance art... thing. She left the College of Winterhold because they disapproved of using necromancy for non-research purposes, and then she left a group of spellswords because she was disgusted by the idea of using her "art" as a weapon. Buffy Speak pothole.
• YMMV.El Topo ZCE
• YMMV.Equus Commented out ZCE.
• YMMV.Enemy
  • Audience-Alienating Premise: Given the movie’s...trippy nature and the disturbing amount of spiders in this movie, it can be kinda hard to recommend this movie to common filmgoers. Buffy Speak pothole. The pothole can be swapped with Mind Screw.
• YMMV.Frank ZCE
• YMMV.The Groovenians
  • Critical Dissonance: Even though critics and audiences alike hated its poor animation and storytelling, The Groovenians was able to get nominated for an Annie award, possibly because of the "artsy" elements courtesy of the creator being a surrealist artist himself. Potshot towards the creator.
• YMMV.Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi
  • "Treasure Map"/"Artist Ami" Commented out ZCE.
• YMMV.Igorrr
  • Very, very much so ZCE
• YMMV.Imogen Heap
  • A lot of her videos.
  • The lyrics for some of her songs are complete gibberish. First example is ZCE. Second example doesn't mention which videos of the creator this applies to.
• YMMV.John Lennon
  • Unintentional Period Piece: As the Beatle most in tune with the zeitgeist of his era, much of his work has a dated quality these days, particularly the psychedelic later-period Beatles songs, the True Art Is Incomprehensible material with Yoko, and his fondness for the Protest Song in his solo career. It's been suggested that this is a big reason why younger generations who get into The Beatles seem to gravitate more toward Paul McCartney (and George Harrison). ZCE pothole, also appears to be a potshot.
• YMMV.Katawa Shoujo
  • Broken Base: Rin's route can be seen as overly pretentious, forced and melodramatic to the point of emotionally manipulating the viewer into feeling guilty for even questioning anything related to Super Woobie Baby Rin, as well as hard to understand due to Walls of Text and Purple Prose. Or as an awe-inspiring piece of literature that reaches huge Character Development for both of them, plays the Darker and Edgier trope right and realistically, and can be played easily if you pay a little more attention. Sinkhole. The Wall of Text pothole already has enough support.
• YMMV.My Wife And Kids
  • Junior's poem in "Jay the Artist". It has to be seen to be believed. Already commented out, and violates Weblinks Are Not Examples.
• YMMV.Naked Lunch
  • Believe it or not, some people are confused by this book. Why? What parts of the book make this confusing?
• Creator.Nicolas Cage
  • Doing It for the Art: Cage created and manages Saturn Films, which, if you follow the link, has a record of producing utterly terrible flops that all star Nicolas Cage. Neither the quality nor the lack of appeal of these films seem to put him off. This film company may have something to do with his financial troubles elaborated on [Money, Dear Boy]. Potshot towards the actor's film company.
• Characters.Dwarf Fortress
  • The Rival: To Emperor Sankis, due to his hatred of Sankis's unusual engravings. He wants to send a message to would-be criminals with her death. This, as well as Mongol threatening to destroy her future tomb and use it for supplies, causes Sankis to return these feelings. Double potshot. The example can be written without the links and still make sense.
• VideoGame.Time Fcuk
  • The description points out that, despite its weirdness, the game is NOT an art game. Invoked, but this appears to be a Take That, Audience! instead. Also commented out after wick check was completed.
• TearJerker.Rent
  • The song "Without You". It gets better in the movie. First, there's the montage of the support group, with each member who dies slowly fading from view as the camera pans over them, and then there's the inclusion of Angel's death at the end, shown in its blunt, harsh, painful reality, as Collins cries holding the body. This replaces the Mind Screw/True Art Is Incomprehensible original version of the death from "Contact", and was included by Word of God because of the age of the musical: by the time the movie was made, AIDS research had progressed enough that the disease is no longer an automatic death sentence and a lot of modern people wouldn't get why such a big deal is made out of contracting it. By showing Angel's death, the pain and sorrow and loss and suffering is brought home to the viewer in a way "Contact" never could have, and pairing it up with "Without You" makes it even more poignant and heart-wrenching. It certainly works. This pothole is defied, which is the same as the trope not happening.
• YMMV.The Sacrifice ZCE
• VideoGame.Kyle Is Famous
  • Heroic BSoD: If Kyle claims that he is Rachel May during the interview and has no interview questions prepared, he just remains silent and motionless as the camera continues to roll with no one really knowing what to do. This was eventually interpreted as Kyle performing an artistic episode. How is this In-Universe? Appears to be a YMMV for Alternate Character Interpretation.
• WorseThanItSounds.Music
  • Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins: A principal songwriter with one of popular music's leading groups joins his life partner for an avant-garde album which anticipates ambient and electronic music by several years. Features a controversial album cover that celebrates the human body in all its diversity. Pothole. The example can be written without the wick and still appear fine.
• YMMV.Hopscotch ZCE for the book's YMMV listing.
• YMMV.RPG Stuck
  • The fraymotifs 3e leak. ZCE
• YMMV.Scaredy Squirrel
  • Genius Bonus: In "The Corgin", Dave paints a green clog and calls it "Voices of Flame", an allusion to the similarly minimalist Voice of Fire. Sinkhole. The pothole can be removed and the example is still valid.
• YMMV.The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air
  • One-Scene Wonder: Vic, the Cold Ham employee at the avant-garde Christmas designer store whose decorations that Will and Ashley rejected in the first Christmas Episode "Deck the Halls". He was portrayed by the late Taylor Negron. Sinkhole
• YMMV.Texhnolyze
  • Maybe not completely, but it doesn't give up its meaning easily. Commented out ZCE.

• YMMV.Blue Velvet
  • Zig-Zagged, while this movie does have its fair share of strange moments, it serves more as an intermediate point between Lynch's surreal films—such as Inland Empire and Eraserhead—and his more grounded films—such as The Elephant Man and The Straight Story. Says the trope is being played with, but as the main page lacks a proper description it's hard to tell how this can be played with.
• YMMV.Broken Plot Device
  • Thoroughly deconstructed. To quote Max: "The king...is naked." Conversed Trope?
• YMMV.Lady Gaga
  • She's offended quite a few people and organizations. While many are strict conservative groups, a surprising amount of race and gay right activists don't appreciate her having appointed herself their spokesperson (words taken from a magazine article). While her methods are...somewhat unorthodox, she did play a part in getting the U.S military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy reversed, but public opinion of her has been (and more than likely will be) divided for some time.
  • Her influence on DADT is open to interpretation, some think she just jumped on the band wagon, some think she caused it to change, some think it was just going to happen and she just helped it happen faster. Second example is neutral. First example is vague with the bolded text.
• YMMV.Death Grips
  • Don't try to "get" Death Grips lyrics. Just don't.
    Deep Web: I'M THE COAT HANGER IN YOUR MAN'S VAGINA!!!
  • In their farewell note, a portion of it read: "Death Grips was and always has been a conceptual art exhibition anchored by sound and vision. above and beyond a 'band'."
  • Their Instagram often falls under this; strange images are uploaded with zero context, sometimes repeatedly (with the most extreme example being a bottle full of cigarettes being posted 45 times in a row). First example is complainy, second example is vague, and the third example is correct and neutral.
• YMMV.Forbidden Zone
  • The movie makes more sense when you realize that the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo started out as an absurdist performance-art troupe. The content, however, does not. Sets up an argument with Makes Just as Much Sense in Context.
• YMMV.Freddy Got Fingered
  • It's earned something of a tongue-in-cheek reputation as a neo-dadaist auteuré film thanks to its seemingly non-existent plot, refusal to make a point out of anything, and Tom Green's word that it was at least partially a stab at shallow studio comedies. As mentioned above, it's not "So Bad, It's Good," it's "so bad, it's art!"
  • Along with Roger Ebert's quote at the top of the main page, A.O. Scott of The New York Times stated that several skits, such as "The Backwards Man" and the infamous "Sausage Piano" scene, might have qualified for a National Endowment for the Arts grant if they weren't from a Hollywood film, and said that they might still go on to appear in the New York Museum of Modern Art someday.
  • Probably why the film has a cult fandom — including Nathan Rabin.
  • Mike Stoklasa of RedLetterMedia presents a compelling case that Green intended the film to be a massive Take That! towards dumb studio comedies by making it the worst possible version of such a film. The fact that the story is literally about Green's character wasting a clueless executive's money doing whatever he wants adds further bite to this reading, as it suggests that Green was completely confident that studio executives cared only about capitalizing on his popularity and shock value and would pay no attention to the content of the film itself.
  • In-Universe, this is how Hollywood executive Dave Davidson sees Gord's cartoon pitch. Examples two and four are correct, the first example cites the So Bad, It's Good example^{Example in question} So Bad, It's Good: An interesting case; panned in every conceivable way and often a contender for "Worst film of all time", it's since developed a cult following claiming that it's an exercise in dadaism. Roger Ebert even predicted this in his review of the film: "The day may come when Freddy Got Fingered is seen as a classic of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny.", the middle example is vague, and the last example is In-Universe.
• YMMV.LSD Dream Emulator
  • Most, if not all, of the noninteractive video dreams seem to fall under this...unless anyone else can figure out the meaning behind watching a kid eating, a goldfish bowl sitting in an elevator, a montage of Russian stamps, and pigeons sitting on ledges, flying, and walking around. It's likely that this is entirely intentional, considering how little sense most people's dreams seem to make. Argues that this could be an invoked example.
• YMMV.Neurosis
  • Not as bad as some other examples, but don't expect Neurosis' music to make sense on early listens. Due to their heavy use of dissonance and lengthy songs, it often takes time for their music to "click" with listeners. Cites the instance of this trope being used as complaining on this very wiki.
• YMMV.So You Think You Can Dance
  • Happens quite a bit in Contemporary. Sometimes it works, such as the beloved "Hummingbird" routine form Season 3. Other times... let's put is this way: Season 5 gave us an alien who just destroyed Earth. Now she wants to mate with the last human left, and won't take "Somebody help me!" for an answer.
  • Season 8 gave us a hip-hop routine that was allegedly about children forced to fight in the war in Uganda. The only things that even remotely hinted at this, other than the explanation in the intro bit, were the T-shirts for a relevant charity worn by the dancers. At least the audience wasn't the only one left utterly confused by this; the judges were just as befuddled. First example is confusing, while the second example is a case of Implied Trope that leans towards being a Justifying Edit.