I don't think the market is ever going to be willing to value art based on how many hours it took. There's probably a fair way to do it, but that probably isn't it, imo. It's too focused on the artist's perspective but not on the customer's perspective - they care about how the painting makes them feel a lot more than how much time it took to make.

In theory yes, but you need to realize that you have "survivor bias" - the current art market is purely narcissistic ... because a large chunk of people do not participate in today's market.

I'm talking about "expanding the size of the pie" ...

No, today's art buyers will probably never care about how many hours it took the artist to paint a canvas ... But ... my hypothesis (I may be wrong but my guts tell me that I'm right) is that there is a significant mass of people who do not dare, who stay away from today's art market precisely because they need an external "value benchmark".

The current art market is purely reflexive - people buy things because they like them (without caring about external objective parameters) and because "it's a famous artist" - i.e. "other people I look up to have bought this artist already" - this is "art" being treated as a cult / religion

Are only people ready to treat art as a cult enjoying art? On my side, I am often inclined to buy art but I refrain because I'm rational and I can't buy something which I might be wildly overpaying. So when you analyze and say "the market is not going to ... this or that", you don't see me and people like me in the market you are looking at, because we are not participating.