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Notes -
You can have vector clip art that isn't in the ugly GloboHomo style though -- those 80s clip art disks that came in every issue of MacWorld were full of Illustrator files like this; good lookin lady, sort of an art-deco/art-nouveau hybrid, definitely has something like "beauty" as an aim.
Contrast with this: https://networkcultures.org/cloudbaseddesigner/wp-content/uploads/sites/51/2021/03/heroes.001.jpeg -- the ugliness seems almost deliberate.
I don't believe that the top one is more work -- you can knock that stuff out with a stylus in Illustrator really fast, you need an eye for it though. Could just be that there aren't really working illustrators available anymore, IDK.
It's possible that the ugliness is deliberate. For some people, beauty is uncomfortable and alienating. If people are insecure about their appearance or neurotic about unfavourable judgements about other people (especially "marginalized" people) perhaps to the point of trying to reject the very idea of beautiful people (more common than you would think - "Everyone is beautiful" is a rejection of the concept of beautiful people)
More generally, GloboHomo has an emotionally flattening, inclusive, and childlike quality. It wasn't present nurseries when I was young, but I can easily imagine it in them, in a way I can't imagine anything like your first picture being let anywhere near a nursery. It's hygge-culture and wholesomism, extended to art. When I think about it, GloboHomo repels me far more than brutalism or modern art, and that's saying something. At least they aspire to something daring, even if there's more than a little of Satanic bitterness to them. It's the type of thing that makes me want to join the Wagner group, and I'm about as anti-Putin/pro-Ukraine as can be.
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Dude, that first one is a Patrick Nagel. If you think just anyone can "knock that stuff out" with Illustrator, well, give it a shot. You're just wrong.
The second link is indeed drawings that are assembled with fairly simple vector techniques (albeit still requiring some design skills).
Yep but it will be one of the first cabs off the rank for AI. People will 'rip it', ie train a model using all his work to create new works, not for sale, which would break copyright but just for themselves and friends. He will still command good prices initially as his meme-print grows but because of the ubiquity and virality of memes, success will inevitably erode value ultimately. Can only have one Warhol period and we've had it.
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The disks were probably not full of actual Patrick Nagel files, no -- but that's rather the point isn't it? In the 80s, clip art was imitating Patrick Nagel -- now we are imitating deliberate ugliness on every damn powerpoint deck.
Again, rather the point -- when "just anyone" tries it it kind of looks like crap: https://www.lifewire.com/photo-into-nagel-inspired-vector-portrait-1077506
But someone who is decent with Illustrator (not me) will have a stab at it for 25 buck, so it can't take all that long: https://www.fiverr.com/ikhwantaripa/turn-your-pic-into-my-version-of-a-patrick-nagel-art
I don't think the globohomo is much faster to do -- if you are good with a stylus you can trace a photo very fast, drawing all those donut shapes seems at least as hard.
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