If artists only cared about pleasuring people, they stand...
Art is more sophisticated than that.
If artists only cared about pleasuring people, they stand no chance against the nicotine and sex industries. Of course there is nothing wrong about making art simply to be pleasing to the eye, just as there is nothing wrong with making radio-friendly pop music. But art also has to power to expand your view of life and humanity, affect you in ways that make you a larger person (no not as in fat), more complete, more intellectual. This may sound like I am differentiating between "highbrow" and "lowbrow" but it is not that. Every piece of art affects every beholder in ways that they do not comprehend. You do not have to be able to verbally articulate how a piece of art affects you and what it is doing to affect you in that way, in order for it to have affected you. Leave that to art critics. If you enter a modern museum and come out feeling a little befuddled, you have still been affected. Your perspective of life has gained something. The majority of our brain processes are unconscious. So it is not possible to fully comprehend how something has affected you. There are too many variables. But beauty is only one aspect of art, and possibly a superficial one.