Art has always been a big circlejerk of names. You've got to do something that people consider "groundbreaking" or so horribly stupid that people will either hail it a masterpiece out of irony or to appear more "in tune" with the "new direction" of art. Before the more modern stuff, folks like DaVinci earned their popularity by going to a prestigious art school and/or apprenticing under a famous artist (of course, DaVInci was also pretty smart, so his inventions kind of mattered, too).

I digress. Picasso's non-cubist works are indeed terrible, there's no denying that. What I want to know, though, is how people came to accept his cubist works, because despite my previous explanation, I don't see it sitting very well with people. I understand that art can (and, as I've been told, should) push the envelope, but god damn, people who liked his work then must been smoking something powerful. )

...on the other hand, the art community's always had the attitude we now associate with hipsters (if you've ever wondered where it came from, that's your answer): an obsession with older things (like art from dead artists, because god forbid we hail something as genius and let someone become a household name before they're dead) and a somewhat shallow attachment to the art they make and the art they idolize (in all honesty, I think the general public actually enjoys viewing artwork more).