The market for visual art is among the most opaque of all cultural economies, governed by taste-making relationships between galleries, collectors, and critics whose criteria are never fully explicit and change faster than any artist can track. To make work with the market in mind is a legitimate strategy; to make work for the market alone is a different practice, and the distinction matters. The art that outlasts its market tends to have been made by someone who cared about something else more.
Each step builds on the last.