The truth is ANYBODY can make GREAT art if given the chance to really pursue it. Museums are kind of against that idea and enshrine a bunch of bulllllshit
You kind of hit on something I've been thinking about, that especially with modern tools there are countless artists today who in terms of sheer technical ability far outstrip any of the old artists still celebrated as geniuses or masters, to the extent that "being good at art" is devalued and most have to make a living the same way as most historical artists: by doing vapid commissions for people with money to throw at them. Maybe the number who could have picked up and worked with the cruder and shittier tools available in the past is much lower, because that requires a different level of dedication and entails learning a different set of skills and techniques, but tools are such a quintessential part of human labor that "ah but what if your tools sucked, like they were the absolute worst, and cost ten times as much despite being awful, where would you be then?" is kind of a copout.
Although that said, I also think old art is something to be preserved for its historical value just because it's a physical chunk of human culture that's survived to the modern day. It has a sort of value to it that's distinct from its literal quality or the ethics of its creation, like how ancient Roman statues and mosaics and the like were all mass-produced trash (mosaics especially: there objectively were good works of art by skilled artisans in that time period, and there are mountains of half-assed standard-template pieces that still got fucked up by being done haphazardly and cheaply by the contractors that put them in) made at the demand of a class of idle slavers in an incredibly vile, chauvinist culture, but the bits and pieces that have survived to this day are still valuable artifacts because they're a glimpse of human history.
You kind of hit on something I've been thinking about, that especially with modern tools there are countless artists today who in terms of sheer technical ability far outstrip any of the old artists still celebrated as geniuses or masters, to the extent that "being good at art" is devalued and most have to make a living the same way as most historical artists: by doing vapid commissions for people with money to throw at them. Maybe the number who could have picked up and worked with the cruder and shittier tools available in the past is much lower, because that requires a different level of dedication and entails learning a different set of skills and techniques, but tools are such a quintessential part of human labor that "ah but what if your tools sucked, like they were the absolute worst, and cost ten times as much despite being awful, where would you be then?" is kind of a copout.
Although that said, I also think old art is something to be preserved for its historical value just because it's a physical chunk of human culture that's survived to the modern day. It has a sort of value to it that's distinct from its literal quality or the ethics of its creation, like how ancient Roman statues and mosaics and the like were all mass-produced trash (mosaics especially: there objectively were good works of art by skilled artisans in that time period, and there are mountains of half-assed standard-template pieces that still got fucked up by being done haphazardly and cheaply by the contractors that put them in) made at the demand of a class of idle slavers in an incredibly vile, chauvinist culture, but the bits and pieces that have survived to this day are still valuable artifacts because they're a glimpse of human history.