With art, including old master works and much of modern art, cerebral understanding of art history, mythology, iconography, context, critical theory, etc. reveals more from the work than is available to those who lack that understanding. But the master work, for example, offers something visual, experiential, and emotional that draws in and holds the viewer without requiring information based revelation.
Current conceptual art that tries only to visualize someone else's theory, the "idea" based art needing the company of theoretical explanation to hold up, hides the ball, all that privileged information the viewer needs to "get" the work, in plain sight (for the a-ha, clever moment reserved to the special few who come in with the privileged information) or not. This artistic strategy may be visualized by concealing important, interesting aspects of art behind actual pieces presented for viewing, with no encouragement to the viewer to uncover the "real" art.
If purposeful concealment/obfuscation included some visual encouragement or clue in the work to cue the viewer to seek and find and uncovered something as resonant upon discovery as the cave paintings that through nature were hidden for centuries, perhaps concealment /obfuscation as a strategy would be useful. But if the reveal is never encouraged and never occurs, or the revealed offers only further obfuscation or is wholly uninteresting, the dialogue between artist and viewer is non-existent and the experience for the viewer seems pointless. Though, the artist may chuckle.
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