Historically, art was paid for at all levels.
You needed a rich patron if you were doing a massive task like the Sistine Chapel but people still bought artisanal works for themselves and for others.
And people didn't hate NFTs because they were "expensive investment vehicles". They hated them because it was a bunch of shitty techbros shitting on artists by stealing their work and reselling it, or using ugly procedurally generated garbage in a pyramid scheme and calling it art.