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.
Lenin quote about defanging and canonization, something something the idealization of suffering as a tool of normalizing conditions that make art, and therefore cultural reproduction, the sole territory of the bourgeoisie .