Art As a Status Function

In the early twentieth century the art world began to prioritize the autonomy of the artist over aesthetic standards.  Artists were given carte blanche to create art or to declare something to be art, while aesthetic standards and traditional notions of beauty became increasingly irrelevant.  This change, and the art it produced, can be understood in terms of Status Functions and Status Function Declarations.  

According to Prof. John R. Searle of UC Berkeley (go Bears!), a Status Function is a function performed by an object or person (or entity) not in virtue of the object's or person's physical properties but in virtue of the object or person having a collectively recognized status.  President of the United States is a good example.  Harry Truman functioned as president not in virtue of his physical features but in virtue of the fact that Americans recognized him as having a certain status, namely, President of the United States.

Prof. John R. Searle

A Status Function Declaration (SF Declaration), according to Searle, assigns to an object or person a Status Function.**  On Searle's account all of social reality, all institutions and institutional facts, are created by SF Declarations.  Typically SF Declarations take the form of constitutive rules, which, spelled out logically, look like this: (X) counts as (Y) in context (C).  These rules act as "standing SF Declarations," and they make possible everything from the game of chess to a twenty dollar bill to President of the United States.

In 1917 the Society of Independent Artists put on an exhibition in New York.  Under the society's constitution, the show was open to any and all submissions from member artists.  The society's board of directors made clear it would not kowtow to preconceived notions of art or beauty.  There was no jury.  There were no prizes.  There were no aesthetic criteria.  In other words, anything a member artist submitted would be displayed.  Or, to put it as a constitutive rule:  Anything a member artist submits for display (X) counts as art (Y) in this exhibition (C).  

Marcel Duchamp, a 30-year-old French expat who had helped to found the society and was a member of its board of directors, put the rule to a test: under a pseudonym, "R. Mutt," he submitted Fountain, a urinal he had turned upside down and signed.  By a majority vote the society's board of directors refused to display Fountain—i.e., the board rejected the urinal's status as art (thereby breaking the constitutive rule and violating the society's constitution).  Duchamp resigned in protest.  But after the exhibition acceptance of the urinal qua art quickly spread, and eventually nearly everyone in the art world came to believe Fountain was art.  Duchamp had inaugurated a new kind of art—known as "readymade" or "found object"—and in doing so helped to change the nature of art.

Today "art" is whatever an artist declares to be art.  Since Fountain, artists have declared to be art everything from a bed to a boulder to a can of feces.  These declarations are SF Declarations.  Logically, they take the form "Object (X) counts as art (Y) in this exhibition, gallery, etc. (C)."  Practically, these declarations can look any number of ways.  Duchamp once commented on the importance of signing his readymades.  He didn't have Searle's vocabulary, but he knew intuitively that his signature was essential to changing the object's status—i.e., his signature was a SF Declaration, or at least an important part of one.  

How does an object function as art?  According to Searle, function is always spelled out in terms of deontic powers:  "rights, duties, obligations, requirements, permissions, authorizations, entitlements, and so on."  When an artist declares an object to be art, our relationship to the object changes.  In my first post I told a story that illustrates well one aspect of this change:  Once during a visit to the modern wing of the L.A. County Museum of Art, I distractedly reached out and touched a switch plate on a wall.  A docent approached and admonished me not to touch the exhibits.  The "switch plate" was art.  Had I known, I would never have touched it.  After I was told, I felt I had done something wrong (albeit unwittingly).   

This anecdote also illustrates why traditional kinds of art such as representational painting and sculpture depend less on SF Declarations than does found object art.  First, because found object art typically has a function before it is declared to be art—a non-artistic function performed in virtue of its physical properties, not a collectively recognized status.  So unless the object in question is assigned a new function (i.e., unless it is declared to be art), it will simply continue to be what it was.  Paintings and sculptures, on the other hand, do not have an anterior function and thus do not require a SF Declaration to operate aesthetically or to be identified as art.  There is no chance we will confuse them with something else.  

A second reason traditional art depends less on SF Declarations is that it offers more aesthetically than found object art.  No one needs to be told that a representational painting—even a mediocre one—is worthy of special attention, ought not to be touched, etc.  We do need to be told that a switch plate is worthy of special attention and ought not to be touched.  And even after we're told, we might not believe it.  And if enough people don't believe it, then we don't have a piece of art.

This is the irony of the art world's divorce from aesthetic standards.  The goal was total artistic freedom.  The result was greater dependence than ever before on what other people think.  Before the twentieth century, art and artists were dependent on collective acceptance of aesthetic standards.  Now they are dependent on collective acceptance of SF Declarations.

**There are special cases that don't involve a preexisting object, person, or entity (X).  For more on Searle's theory, please see his book "Making the Social World."