Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think ticket price and quality of the art are only related because they’re both a factor of how long the event has been happening.
I started going in 1997. As I recall, nearly all the art was “outsider” quality — the stuff that a determined couple of folks with carpentry or welding skills could put together. It was all very accessible, and most of it felt at least somewhat amateur — in a good way (amateur = built as an act of love).
In 2003 I built an art project by myself — two disc golf baskets (one with fire, one with EL wire), and gave away 100 discs. It cost me $700 or so, and a few weeks of work. It was still amateur, as the level of the artwork around it got bigger and better.
In 2012 I participated in a “core” project with local burners. There were about 50 of us, with about 10 working every weekend for six months to produce our art project “Caroushell.”
These days there are massive projects that take months of work by dedicated teams and tens of thousands of dollars of contributions. The professionalism of the art has certainly improved. To me the accessibility has suffered — I look at some of the artworks and cannot imagine how they managed to organize and finance and build and transport and remove.
The interactive quality of the art has increased and decreased over the years, but on the whole it has steadily improved. “Entertainment”? You mean the brand-name DJs who play at the trash fence? This is not Coachella. This is not a concert. It’s participatory. As an attendee, you are the entertainment. Have you improved? I hope I have.
If you think a $420 ticket is expensive, try buying a $20,000 searchlight to put in the nose of the 30-foot tall mobile rubber duck mutant vehicle you’re driving people around in for days and nights.