Even under capitalism, there is PLENTY of demand for artists: Graphic designers, interior design, manufacturing beautiful items, architecture, civil engineering, sound engineers. Almost EVERYTHING requires art to some degree yet you have to be like the best of the best to get paid for an artistic career and even then your work is seen as frivolous. As if simply being an artist for a living is compensation enough.
Meanwhile, some dipshit on Wall Street does fuck all to improve the world and is showered with both money and praise just for waking up and doing over-glorified gambling.
I'm not an artist, but props to those who are, they are unironically incredibly important to making life somewhat bearable yet are criminally taken for granted.
Pardon the rant.
Demand doesn’t necessarily mean much. If you believe that art is fundamentally useless compared to writing 500,000 lines of code to trade stocks automatically, then you’re not going to invest in the artist. Schools have been reducing art and music classes (as well as other “less important” classes) in favor of STEM.
Another example of the perception of a job’s value is janitors. Janitors are essential to society to function yet they are treated as bumbling idiots who can’t achieve anything and get paid accordingly. Or fast food workers - it’s a multi billion dollar industry but is seen as a job for dumb kids to stay busy or adults who failed in life.
As someone mentioned above, even in inherently creative industries such as entertainment artists are treated as trash because many are fueled by passion and you can take advantage of that. Exposure as compensation rather than money.