Artists have never had it so good, right? Access to technology is abundant (even a humble smartphone can shoot award-winning photos and films), we’re able to digitally peruse the entire human zeitgeist for inspiration, and there are a multitude of platforms for showcasing creative products. Gone are the days when artists had to rely on the whims of wealthy aristocrats to fund their creations. In the twenty-first century, breaking free from the drudgery of a 9-to-5 job to pursue the dream of becoming a self-made artist seems, on the surface, more attainable than ever.  

But the story isn’t so simple. Historically, the patronage system provided a clear—if fraught—path for artists. Families like the Médicis of Renaissance Florence were instrumental in supporting artists such as Michelangelo and Botticelli, giving them the financial stability to hone their craft. But artists were often bound to the tastes and demands of their patrons, who determined the subject matter and scope of what they produced. Creativity was, in many cases, constrained by the requirements of those with power and money. Artists traded their autonomy for stability, a fixed income, and access to elite circles that could propel their work into the cultural canon.

While today’s artists are no longer beholden to wealthy patrons in the same way, the shift to a capitalist creative economy presents its own set of challenges. Technology has democratized the tools of creation, but it has flooded the social realm, making it far harder for the actual artists to stand out amid an ocean of viral videos, always-on livestreams, corporate IP plays and cinematic universes, and the recent deluge of AI-generated content.

Corporations and the platforms they have created—social media, streaming services, advertising, and the like—control many of the purse strings and ignore anything that won’t turn an immediate profit. And even if you’re lucky to live in a country with public funding streams for creative work, these grants, fellowships, and residencies are so competitive that they’re often not worth the time it takes to put a pitch together. We may appear to have moved away from an age where the whims of the wealthy elite would dictate the creation of art, but we find ourselves in a place that is nevertheless familiar, from the artist’s perspective. Another century’s popes and archdukes have been replaced by today’s CEOs and boards of directors. And anyway, the creative process is never a triumph of the self, however celebrated individuals may be. Even what appear to be acts of individual creativity rely on the broader social context for their existence. Whether artists have been marginalized or oppressed by society, catalyzing potent creative responses, or whether they have been given access to platforms and broad audiences by the operations of privilege, supposedly “individual” creativity never happens in a vacuum.

In Cassidy McFadzean’s short story “Patrons,” this tension is on full allegorical display, in the form of benevolent extraterrestrial beings who scoop up artists and take them to a utopian existence where they are free to create whatever they please. Or at least, that’s how it seems. The Patrons’ off-world retreat, offering an escape from the capitalist competition of artistic production, appears (at least initially) to be a return to precapitalist forms of patronage.

However, this retrograde model, like the historical systems of patronage it invokes, is riddled with contradictions. While the artists at the retreat are freed from the immediate pressures of monetizing their work, they remain constrained by the tastes and expectations of their extraterrestrial hosts: the artists long for the intense feeling of joy and the “pat on the head” they receive from their alien overlords. In this sense, McFadzean’s portrayal accurately allegorizes how the act of creating art is never fully separate from its conditions of production, whether those conditions are dictated by a market-driven economy or by the whims of an otherworldly benefactor.

Capitalism has twisted creativity into just another tool of value extraction, not just in the arts but in every sector of the economy (from higher education to fast food). Creativity (and all the related nomenclature: “entrepreneurship,” “innovation,” and anything “smart”) has become a means to justify precarity, asking workers to be flexible, innovative, and constantly productive, even as their material and living conditions worsen. “Patrons” captures this dynamic as the artists at the retreat grow restless, seeking distractions like internet access for their downtime. Despite the promise of security, comfort, and a stress-free life, the very act of making art under the pressure to please their Patrons becomes stressful and dispiriting, echoing an artist’s everyday reality. Even if financial concerns are ostensibly alleviated for a time, the performance of creativity within a system of external validation remains alienating, in the Marxist sense of lacking the ability to own the conditions and goals of their labor.

Initially, the Patrons select for their off-world retreat the artists and celebrities extolled by our insatiable, consumer-driven society. Social media stars, famous singers, and tech moguls are carted away, only to return a few months later in tears and shame, unable to satisfy the inscrutable tastes and preferences of their erstwhile Patrons. But the celebrities unwittingly teach the Patrons that art created within of the context of flashy but ultimately vacuous media products has little value. In response, they begin “selecting the chosen not by pedigree, but by peculiarities”: albinos, the homeless, ex-offenders, the poor—people from the margins of society.

Art that has social and political relevance ultimately requires a social background of experience in the harsh realities of life, or at least a recognition that these conditions exist and generate privileges for a select few, just as they oppress many more. For individuals who have working-class backgrounds, suffer from racial oppression, live with disabilities, or are otherwise marginalized by society, creativity often emerges not despite their circumstances but because of them. For those creating from a place of privilege, art that doesn’t acknowledge those mechanics of domination and subordination will often inevitably uphold the status quo, rather than attack it or encourage critical thinking about the audience’s relation and contributions to it.

The narrator of McFadzean’s story is a humble librarian and amateur poet; she finds herself taken to the Patrons’ refuge and able to focus on writing her poems, which she clearly loves to do. The overwhelming gratification she receives from her Patron is the tonic she needs to fulfill her desire to be a fully-fledged artist. Even in this utopia, our narrator begins to question her worth. She ends a poem for her Patron with the question, “Am I right for this world?” This question embodies the dual quest for self-expression and external recognition that so many artists navigate; of course, the Patron doesn’t give her an answer. Her question also reflects how creativity is often judged not on the intrinsic qualities of the art it produces, but on its alignment with dominant cultural or economic norms. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the alien Patrons, despite offering an alternative to capitalist markets, impose their own opaque criteria for artistic worth, much like the aristocratic patronage of old, or like today’s wealth funds, media platforms, and tax-dodging corporations.

The Patrons take us back to a time when artists were free from the contemporary conditions of the capitalist market but trapped within cages of elite whims. But if patronage is not an escape from the precarity and vacuity of a capitalist art world, then what is?

The answer, as many critiques of the creative economy will also suggest, lies in the democratization of art, or perhaps more radically, its proletarianization. To support such an effort requires a shift from the market-driven approach that currently engulfs the “creative industries” to one that values art as a public good, requiring substantial investment from public sources. In many of Sweden’s cities, for instance, the One Percent Rule requires private companies to provide financial support to artists when any new building development is greenlit. As the name suggests, approximately one percent of the budget must be given to artists, which can be used to create works of public art, build social engagement programs, or establish a studio.

Beyond the Swedish example, alternative funding schemes could involve cooperative ownership models, wherein artists form collectives to share resources (as is happening with small independent video game designers in the United Kingdom), or universal basic income programs that provide financial security for all citizens—including artists—allowing them to focus on their craft without the constant pressure to monetize. Moving away from art as an individual profession and toward a more communal model requires thinking more about how art and artistic practices have always been part of the cultural commons, and how they need to be returned there. Ultimately, art—from any artist, from any background—that fails to acknowledge the social conditioning of where the talent has come from, is not art; it’s advertising.

Cassidy McFadzean’s story offers a rich and complex meditation on the tensions among artistic creation, financial dependence, validation, and capitalist oppression. Its exploration of alternative economies of patronage serves as a poignant allegory for contemporary artists caught between market pressures, the desire for creative autonomy, and a yearning for a better world. As an active public—both artists and audiences together—we can intervene and move beyond capitalist markets and elite patronage, focusing instead on creating sustainable, liveable conditions in which artists can flourish. This, ultimately, is the challenge facing those of us who care about the future of artistic expression in a hypercapitalist world.