Artists don't have stand ups, team meetings, planning sessions, one-on-ones, commutes and whatever other office distractions to deal with though. I suppose figuring out how to survive as an artist is distraction enough.
The theory as it went is that most artists aren’t “ahead of their time”, it’s that they see Now in a way that nobody else will understand for years. Eventually, with the aid of the lens of nostalgia we see that they really “get us”, as we now understand ourselves.
Being out in the world is how they “get” us. It’s material, not faffing about.
Dead people are mostly safe from this, though not completely - some dirty laundry might surface years after death, forever tarnishing the image, but such occurrences are rather rare.
Also, with artists, only after death you can have his 'complete' works, not having to worry about increasing supply of them, which would push the price down.
IMO, artistic people often see the "true nature" of things and ingest/interpret them in a way that is pretty judgement-free and quite "open". It allows them to be inspired and influenced by those things, and grow their understanding of the world around them, and thus interact with it and contribute back to it in an organic way. Again, all my subjective opinion from many years of being creative myself and collaborating with creative people. :)
But I love your theory too.
Clarity I think comes from being “part” of the world or some specific part of it. While many and most “live” through it, the Artist sees the inverse of a sorts of it - the “big picture within some lens”. Then, tries to process and communicate the unseen truths in whatever medium they are accustomed.
The only way to insulate yourself from that would be to be completely unsuccessful.
But then you would have to be either extremely poor, which is exhausting, or make/have money another way, which is likely to be a huge distraction.
There is really no solving for this.
A friend of mine has been a professional painter for the last 50-ish years. He makes a couple trips a year to the gallery to deliver paintings. The gallerist tries to take that chance to suggest a few motifs that seem to sell better, but doesn't get too pushy.
Most folks that sell have to arrange meetings with clients, take time to mail art, organize prints, either deal with a printer or printing their own stuff, answer customers, interact on social media... and so on. You might not be creating anything creative, but reproductions of wedding photos and pets.
The non-art parts of being an artist add up, and few folks can survive being an artist. At best, most folks have a full time job (or other income) and selling art is, at best, a side hustle.
A gallery helps with some of this. Of course, it is pretty common for the gallery to take 40-50% of the selling price, plus whatever they charge to frame the piece. You then have meetings with them, and they'll drop you in a heartbeat if you don't produce enough or don't sell well. A few will let you rent space, but you generally need to care for it.