Aren't 'Lives in Art' usually subsidized by 'Focussed Mediocrity'?

T.S. Eliot--the banker; Maya Angelou—streetcar conductor; Charles Bukowski—postal clerk; Leonardo DaVinci-- armament designer; Robert Frost—light trimmer; Robert Burns—tax collector; Harvey Peckar--hospital file clerk; Walt Whitman- government clerk; Herman Mellville--Deputy Customs Inspector; Henri Rousseau--customs officer; ........and this list goes into tens of thousands......A life, in ART, has always been 'second tier'...that is, until we normalize the innovations that arose from the thinking and doing of those to whom monuments are later, often much, much later, erected...to those that produced those incomprehensible shiny, black inscrutable monoliths that stick and stone casters both worship and destroy.... ....well, the message is clear enough!