What if the artists intent is to sell a pretty picture that would help pay his rent?
Then that's their intent and that's what matters to them . If it happens to resonate with you, that's a sign they've made very good art. A good example of this is G.F. Handel's "Messiah" which he more-or-less wrote for the money but has become a beloved part of the canon of classical music.
It's certainly the case that art is a triangle: Artist, Artifact, Consumer. But my specific objection to the postmodern/poststructural academic schools is that make it
entirely about the consumer how they see the artifact, and what "personal truth" they find in it - or, more often, personal offense.
They also bowdlerize the original artist and their intent. It's one thing to understand an artist in their time to get context for their work. It's quite another to shove modern sensibilities onto old work and the criticize the artist for not being sensitive enough, indifferent to human rights, blah, blah, blah. Ancient classics are now apparently all guilty of something-phobia and something-ism.
This might seem to be some very arcane academic fight with little relevance to the rest of us, but unfortunately this stuff has been peddled long enough in the Academy that now we see the results in popular culture. For instance, pretty much every training session I got to professionally starts out with "be sure to tell us Your Truth". I want to scream. There is my opinion, my values, my beliefs, my hopes, and my dreams, but there is no such thing as "my truth". If something is true, it true for everyone. THAT is what the post<fill in the blank> schools destroyed.
Why does it matter? Because what an artist is trying to convey - in their time and context - is important to fully grasping their intent, not what some academic thinks they
should have said, written, or painted to suit today's feels ...