Unless you mean our society overvalues "artists" rather than those who create what would traditionally have been referred to as art (ie. pre-1900's), then I don't quite see how we overvalue artists. But even then, how do we overvalue what is seen as a status associated with being a loser?
Artists have never had a higher social profile than they do right now, while, at the same time, barriers to being an 'artist' are lower than ever before. High prospective social status + low barriers to entry = a glut of artists, and artists of lower average quality. That's pretty much ANUS 101, right there.
In the world of "serious" (i.e. academic) art and music, the situation is even more perverse. There, even the artist has been eclipsed in social status by the critic or theorist, as modern society's mania for elevating the significance of "thinking" until it equals or surpasses the significance of "doing" reaches ever more absurd levels.