Art, definition of

3. Functionalism and proceduralism

Many definitions offered in recent decades can be classed as functional or procedural. Functional definitions give centrality to the necessary condition that works of art serve a purpose or purposes distinctive to art, whereas procedural definitions stress that they are created according to certain conventions and social practices. A composite definition mentioning both of these necessary conditions, as well as others, is possible. In practice, though, these two kinds of definition oppose each other, because the procedures by which the status of art is usually conferred have been used to create pieces that do not serve functions traditionally met by art. Indeed, items may be presented as art, though they have as their point the goal of opposing the attempt to appreciate them in the orthodox fashion. Some functionalists offer their definitions with the goal of excluding such pieces from the realm of art, whereas proceduralists aim to include them. These approaches also differ concerning the connection between something counting as art and its having artistic value. Functionalists see the possession of a degree of aesthetic value, measured in terms of an item’s success in fulfilling one or more of the functions of art, as essential to its qualifying as art, while proceduralists regard the artistic evaluation of a thing as separable from the determination of its status as art. The proceduralist’s definition is purely descriptive, having little to say about the significance of art or about the reasons that might lead someone so authorized to confer art-status on one thing rather than another. By contrast, the functionalist’s definition is normative.

Monroe C. Beardsley (1982), a functionalist, characterizes an art work as either an arrangement of conditions intended to be capable of affording an aesthetic experience valuable for its marked aesthetic character, or (incidentally) an arrangement belonging to a class or type of arrangement that is typically intended to have this capacity. (More recent, related versions of aesthetic functionalism are offered by Anderson 2000and Iseminger 2004.) By contrast, Nick Zangwill (2007) characterizes the defining function as the creation of aesthetic properties, not of aesthetic experience. Another version of functionalism is given by Robert Stecker (1994,1997), according to which an item is a work of art at time t if and only if either (a) it is in one of the central art forms at t and is intended to fulfil a standard or correctly recognized function within the set of central art forms at t or (b) it is an artefact that achieves excellence in fulfilling a function belonging to the set of functions for central art forms (whether or not it is in a central art form and whether or not it was intended to fulfil such a function).

Among the tasks and difficulties faced by functionalist accounts are as follows. (1) Specifying the functions of art. (2) Acknowledging both that the point of art might alter through time and that the art-historical context of creation affects the aesthetic character of the work and, thereby, its functionality. The historicism introduced by Stecker’s time-indexing is designed to cover such considerations. (3) Explaining the dysfunctionality of very poor works of art. The common strategy here is to allow that something intended to serve the point or points of art might become an art work even if that intention is unsuccessful or not fully realized. (4) Resolving the status of the hard cases mentioned previously. Beardsley denies that Duchamp’s pieces are works of art and Zangwill allows that they are art only in a secondary, derivative fashion. Stecker argues that, within their art-historical setting, they serve accepted functions of art (reference to and rebellion against former artistic types and practices). He notes that they could not have served equivalent functions in earlier times.

The most detailed version of a procedural account is the institutional theory developed by George Dickie. His most recent definition (1984) runs: (a) an artist is a person who participates with understanding in the making of an art work; (b) a work of art is an artefact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public; (c) a public is a set of persons the members of which are prepared in some degree to understand an object which is presented to them; (d) the artworld is the totality of all artworld systems; (e) an artworld system is a framework for the presentation of a work of art by an artist to an artworld public. The ‘artworld’ is the historical and social setting constituted by the changing practices and conventions of art, the heritage of works, the intentions of artists, the writings of critics, and so forth.

Among the difficulties faced by the proceduralist are as follows. (1) Showing that the relevant procedures are established (and, in its institutional version, demonstrating that they mark an informal institution distinguishable from similar institutions with different goals). (2) Demonstrating that it is the procedures used, rather than qualities of the object that provide reason for employing those procedures, that confer art status on the object. (3) Accounting for the art-status of works never presented to, or intended for, a public, including the products of isolated artists, of the earliest artists in history and of those working outside the officially recognized boundaries of the artworld, such as embroiderers. Dickie’s definition requires not that the piece be presented, but that it be of a kind suitable for presentation; also, he could allow that some pieces are enfranchised as art from within the institution after their creation. (4) Avoiding a vicious circularity in characterizing the procedures, or the institution in which they are applied, without assuming their products to be art works. Dickie claims that the circularity in his own account is benign. (5) Resolving the status of the hard cases mentioned previously. Dickie sees it as an advantage of his theory that it accommodates Duchamp’s ready-mades, but one might wonder if the procedural account is able to explain what makes such cases hard.