[rikroots]

While I agree that "high quality art" or "art made from expensive materials" may, for much of human history, have been available only to the rich, I would argue that such art is a minuscule percentage of all the art produced down the ages. Take jewellery, for instance: while the rulers and nobles may have owned brooches and necklaces made from gold or carved from jade, everybody needed to pin their clothes together, or felt safer when they hung a ward/fetish/amulet around their necks to help them get through the day. Such things can be made from the commonest materials (clay, bones, wood, etc) but that doesn't stop the people who made such things putting some effort into making them attractive, beautiful even - in other words, art.