Response to Romancing the Looky-Loos

After reading Hickey's Romancing The Looky-Loos I had started thinking about the idea of "selling out" and having fans as an artist. It's interesting to think about people staying around you, or as an artist, enjoying your work, because there is something in it that they want for or wish they could do themselves. Then once acquiring a fan base this person or artist wants to keep them around, so will do anything- including change their style or even stunt their artistic growth, just to keep these people involved and interested. So, to me, the question is, who is creating the work once it is shown to an audience? We all have crits and show our work to others looking for feed back and input on how to make it better, better so people will like it. We then change things based on the reactions we get from others, it's just a natural action. Are we always selling out? Is making art and then never show it to anyone a better way to avoid influences from the outside world? I may be ranting, but this is what I was thinking about through the entire text. I just had more and more questions that can't really be answered. It was very interesting to read, I like to think.