What killed the Arts?

How Capitalism killed the Renaissance and left us with Cardi B

There was a time when being an artist was not the leisurely endeavour of the children of wealthy parents, or the hobby of idle girls. When young men pursued the vocation of Painter, or Sculptor, it was respected by society and not labelled the financially inadvisable endeavour that it is considered today. Intelligent young people today are often discouraged from the arts because of its “lack of utility” to society, because it is a vocation that makes very little money and would be a “waste of their talents”. They are told they can always paint or draw in their “leisure time” and focus on more important things during the day––grown up things that will help them pay a mortgage or save a pension. 

When a vocation is starved of the most talented and vital members of a generation, it will degenerate, as an untended garden or an abandoned house does. The house of the Arts is covered in cobwebs and overtaken by locusts today. The artists that our era boasts, are people like Cardi B, and our most famous images are pornographic advertisements. But how exactly did this happen? The blame, as usual, is the C word...Capitalism. 

Anatomy of the Heart, 1890, Enrique Simonet, Museum de Malaga, Andalusia, Spain

A System that Nurtured Genius