Alt text: a post from @lolennui.bsky.social that says: Once my German friend asked what creative people do without arts grants and other support in the US and I felt like a parent trying to explain to their kid that the puppies can die sometimes

  • sundray@lemmus.orgEnglish
    186·
    5 months ago

    If you have some free time and aren’t easily depressed, go ahead and look up the backgrounds of your favorite, recently ascendant artists. Many, if not most of them come from privileged backgrounds, have wealthy spouses, trust funds, or familial industry connections.

    And while I personally don’t think that such advantages necessarily diminish the importance of their art, just think of how much more potentially moving and profound work we’ll never see just because the people who should be making it never got chance to develop, since they’ve been too busy just trying to keep a roof over their heads.

    • Mac@mander.xyz
      58·
      5 months ago

      I’ve thought this for a long time about other things. it’s truly a shame.

      • Master@lemm.eeEnglish
        45·
        5 months ago

        We could have cured cancer years ago but the scientist grew up poor and ended up working the graveyard shifts in the mines.

        • Codex@lemmy.world
          81·
          5 months ago

          I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

          ~ Stephen Jay Gould

    • trolololol@lemmy.world
      20·
      5 months ago

      More than that, you’d get better diversity in motifs and techniques if you expand the population base to a representation of society.

    • Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      5 months ago

      This is how societies fall. Everyone just trying to keep a roof above their heads.

      • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
        12·
        5 months ago

        I was a very talented artist and musician growing up and all through high school, from a nice poor family.

        Had to join the army and become an engineer, no trust fund to write books and make music. Luckily at this stage in my life both are possible in my free time, but wished I could do other things than engineer.

    • underwire212@lemm.ee
      5·
      5 months ago

      Well also because of this we only see a very small representative sample with the art that does end up making it out into the open.