There's something rather worrying when you deem "a monkey for hire" to be more noble/proper than an artist shopping his art to prospective buyers. Whose tune have you called lately? Which artist did you commission to create your portrait?

Patronage is inherently a limited, elitist, classist system. I don't exactly approve the load of crappy art we see these days, but to go back to begging for scraps from power elites is a thousand times worse.