Hey, Ron:

You've made a good point. Creation starts with yourself. At least that's the way I feel about it. It's not that great art can't be produced by starting with a determination to produce something that will sell. In that case, you are strictly creating for the audience.
That certainly happens a lot with popular music (and I'm sure has with all forms of music.) You start trying to figure out what people want to hear, and then do your best to give them what they want. But no matter how crass an artist might be, they always end up putting something of themselves into their work. Even the tuna casserole..
And the connection is there when the work of art is presented to the audience... even if the primary pleasure comes from the audience.

I took a book out of the library out of curiosity on How To Write A Hit Song. The basic bit of advice is to start out with everyday saying, or cliches, because the audience will immediately recognize the title of the song. There've been 8 million songs written that way. Who knows, maybe Mick Jagger was searching for ideas and said, "Man, no matter what I do, I can't get any satisfaction," and then went on to write what many rock critics consider to be the greatest rock song of all time. I suspect when he wrote stuff like
Stuck Between A Rock and a Hard Place he started out with that phrase because it is familiar, and then ended up writing what, to me, was a trite, total throw-away recording.

Whichever way you come at it, you end up putting something of yourself into the creation, and if you share the work with an audience, there is a connection that I believe we all seek.

Jerry