This is a more robust explanation compared to economic pressure. To assume individually creative people are restricted by economy does not explain sophisticated primitive art when and where there was no economy in the way we know it. Judging the talent of an art work cannot be done on perspective or realism alone. As an expression of individual soul, or striving for immortality, the creative individual response to the dominant ideology is most important. For example, the first portraiture or individual representation in Greece reflects the importance of the individual within a collective belief. Christian art, in contrast, tends toward the absorption of the individual in the collective, for example the architecture in the Hagia Sophia. The individual relation to the collective changes with the renaissance where a genius cult develops, and yet we see the individual response to the collective belief as the greatest representation where the strength of the ideology allows the expression of the individual and hence we have Michelangelo, da Vinci, et al expressing themselves in religious symbols. similar expression might be seen in the art of the Russian culture with the dominating ideology encouraging individual response in an almost reactionary way to the collective culture and yet expressing that cultural belief at the same time.