The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.
Art is art. Everything else is everything else.
As for a picture, if it isn't worth a thousand words, the hell with it.
I taught a lot of art history, especially Chinese, Japanese, and Indian. But the painting classes came back. The nudes came back. Not so much the still lifes. So now our department is the worst department, partly because it has the worst facilities.
The artist should once and forever emancipate himself from the bondage of appearance.
We all name ourselves. We call ourselves artists. Nobody asks us. Nobody says you are or you aren't.