Way back when I was young, I was accepted to the Chicago ARt Institute, but money/family restrictions kept me from going.
I remember one painting then, about 6'x 5', a canvas divided in half, on a diagonal, with one half all white, the other all yellow. The price tag was $5,000 (in the 50's) and the title was "Untitled # 16". Even the artist didn't know what it was - ;o)
As a representative (primarily portrait) artist, I was out of the mainstream - and I could never learn to paint bad enough to be 'in'.
I was fortunate to live for some years in the Berkshires and had some top nationally known artists to study under = with contact and invaluable critiquing from such as Norman Rockwell, Norman Kent and Robert Brackman.
We used to show in local shows, but our watchword was " If one of your paintings wins a prize, you need to study what's wrong with it!" ;o) We showed simply for the public exposure.
One year in particular, I remember, the first prize went to a purple mess titled "Purple Spaghetti" - now how do you compete with that? ;o)
We could go on about this stuff all day. I recall the 60 Minutes segment on Baquiat, which showed all kinds of art being bought in NYC--a pile of ping-pong balls, for example.
Contemporary art is so far away from communicating to the mainstream public, and the artists DO NOT CARE. ALL the art you see is political in nature, ALL of it hard-left, or it's about someone's menstruation cycle or other garbage like that.
On the other end you have illustration, which is really dying. Each year I pick up the annual Spectrum book of science fiction-themed illustration because there are always a few good pieces in it, but 99% of it is rip-off Frazetta stuff, or CGI futuristic crap with giant weapons.
Art in this country has been so politicized because of the politics of the art school teachers--it can only be combative, or it can be like "Purple Spaghetti"--if you look at it funny you are told you "just don't get it," but I DO get it, it's lazy Pollock rip-off stuff which follows the only aim of artists these days--to shock.
I am lucky to live near Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, where I can still go and look at some beautiful things. I am hugely inspired by art (I write fiction, nothing you'd know though I've sold six pieces of short fiction so far this year) and grab every art book or art website I can for inspiration. It's too bad so much of that inspiration is not from current work.