Of course, an artist can put all his or her work in a drawer and never show it to anyone. In that case, the artist couldn't live off that work. So to make a living, we need to sell ourselves to some degree.

But that's different from equating the work's value with its ability to be sold. It's still possible there's some art that's too good to be sold because the marketplace is flawed and the consumers' expectations are too low. That's the possibility I raised in the article, which Zulie Rane ignored in her video.

Are you talking about patronage as the old-fashioned system? Interestingly, social media might be enabling a return of that system, as with Patreon and other such sites that cut out the middleman.