Being known for anything by millions of people is a perfectly valid indication of popularity. If I had to pay a dollar a month to keep seeing Van Gogh painting

Being known for anything by millions of people is a perfectly valid indication of popularity. If I had to pay a dollar a month to keep seeing Van Gogh paintings, or Andy Warhol, or any artist for that matter. I don't care about art and I doubt the vast majority of humanity would consider spending money on access to any particular artist's work, excluding bands and such. The art world professional artists and art critics see isn't the art world most people see. Some look at a banana taped to a wall and see a strong message about the state of the art industry, or see the peanut butter floor as a daring exercise in discovering the boundaries of art, but I just see pretentious idiots scamming rich people into giving them money. There's a lot of value to art, but that value isn't necessarily based on what the art industry considers valuable.