When looking at arts, we don't regard the average. Countless people write books or paint. Almost everyone at least tried once. What history remembers are the few best of their time. Not those who did better in average, but those who manage to do better than most of their peers. Those to the left of the picture, in which the amplitude of the green curve is nearly void, but the red curve still exists.

I think the red curve picture may be incomplete; it doesn't look like it yields a Lotka curve.