exploitation and art

Is art exploitative by nature? Must an artist necessarily use his subjects and materials to their disadvantage--for purely selfish reasons? When one phrases the question this way, the answer is clearly no. The subject of a work is not always disadvantaged as a symptom of involvement in the work. And the artist does not always gain something from doing a work, unless one views the work itself, whether or not it is successful, as some sort of positive acquisition.

It is true that an artist always uses things in the process of making a work. Maybe the things are materials and some image from the world. Often images from the world include people. If an artist uses an image containing a person, then he would also use the person in the image. However, the product does not necessarily disadvantage the person in the image, nor must it yield gain for the artist. So, art is not exploitative by nature, though it can be and often is.