The audience is tiny compared to that for film or sport. And while it's true that people like to talk about art and artists, it's sometimes driven by idle curiosity for the exotic, for colorful eccentrics, ratbags who sacrifice family life or respectability, and whose work is stylistically tortured or thematically bizarre. The madartist syndrome is sometimes cultivated by artists as much as the popular press. The reasons for the modest public sustenance of art aren't hard to imagine. Since modernism, art has staked its credibility on innovation.
Most artists accept innovation is essential.
You have to be out there busting yourself to be innovative. The art that results is always unfamiliar and, if you like the stuff of previous generations, the radical new material is disappointing and perhaps even a bit threatening. Artists find it hard to revive old traditions and, with the best will in the world, cannot restore the values embedded in old art. Artists who innovate create complicated and stressful art, which alienates much of the community. Meanwhile, artists who try to reach a wider audience through various forms of tradition seem to lack conviction and integrity.