Below a sign that says "LOCAL ART GALLERY" and "ART IS RESISTANCE™", a cubist character is placing a sign that has the following text on it: "SUPPORT LOCAL ARTISTS $500".
Meanwhile, another cubist character, an annoying looking man in a suit, is telling "PLEASE GO AWAY, YOU ARE RUINING THE AESTHETIC" to another character.
Down in the corner, the character being talked to is drawn using curves and regular lines, they look homeless and depressed, and are holding a sign that reads "WILL DRAW FOR FOOD"
$500 isn't exactly much, given how long art takes to produce, how relatively infrequently that art will be bought, and how many extra expenses a "self-employed" artist has. I expect that most people selling art for $500 are hobbyists with some other means of financial support, because they're not going to earn enough to live on by selling art. Portraying them as corporate sellouts is just silly.
(The exception might be some digital artists working on commission. But they're probably drawing furry porn rather than something you might see in a gallery.)
Well yeah, this is criticism of the bourgeois art scene and its "local galleries" undercutting artists to a point where only self sufficient artists can survive, while proletarian artists are treated as undesirables.
It's the same criticism Duchamp was doing of the art world updated for modern times. As we both lived in the same city at different times, it resonates with me.
The "portrayal as corporate sellouts" is a misinterpretation. Maybe my piece is hard to interpret though. Hard to tell since I can't have an objective point of view on it.
My interpretation combined with my observations of the world is as follows.:
Bourgeoisie art scene is a sanitized/toned down version of proletarian art, which could be called more "raw" or "real". Fancy artists act as sort of explorers of raw art and pre-digest it so the (diluted) message can still somewhat reach those who wouldn't have looked at that real art.
They make more money simply because they come from this social class. They get "inspired" by poor artists and copy their style, making more money out of it.
Are they artists? Yeah... Are they true innovators? No way!