The Idea of Function

In class lately we have been taking a look at the idea of function in art. How we and the artist consider the piece in its context, how we adjust our perception of how you see things, when and where the artist came from. We look at identifying the artist and what they thought as they were painting or sculpting or recording their piece. We look at what it emotionally does to us when we look at it. There are personal, social, and physical functions and they could all overlap. In my Shaping of the Contemporary World History Class, Marcel Duchamps "The Fountain" came up on one of the slides of the power point presentation. I was taken back and delighted to see this because we had learned about it previously. Our teacher asked us if this was art. Majority of the class said no you cannot take a piece of ready made object and claim it yours and deem it to be artwork. To them the function of this piece was just part of the curriculum of the history class and they didn't find it beautiful. It didn't seem to serve much of a personal function to them, there didn't seem to be any form of pleasure or therapeutic value. It served as a social function in the way that it represented to our History class a political message, and social conditions and social change of the time period and place that we were looking at. Seeing that a piece of artwork can bring about different ideas, and functions, and feelings in many different people in many different settings I find to be interesting.