If our artistic endeavors are fueled by a particular brand of alienation, which often seems to be the case; then it also seems that the cultivation of any kind of audience could potentially threaten to subvert that alienation. Perhaps this is where the idea of practicing art for the sake of itself comes from. Rather than a coping mechanism for the unlikelihood of success (and the pitfalls of finding it), we might temper our desires themselves, and find greater purpose in dedicating ourselves to something that is both uniquely innate to us, yet somehow 'higher' than us. I suspect that it is in the more solitary and difficult things that we might find at least some of the transcendence we yearn for.
I feel this raises a broader and even more important question: What else do we avoid that we might instead find value in by embracing?