transgressive traditions and art definitions

Transgressive Traditions and Art Definitions

Leslie Graves

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 56, No. 1. (Winter, 1998), pp. 39-48.

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LESLIE GRAVES

Transgressive Traditions and Art Definitions

Timothy Inca-Munch recently created a perfor- mance piece which consisted of going about his normal routine for a week. There were the normal reactions, to which he responded, "People kept asking that old question, 'Yes, but is it ART?' Of course that was the point. The term 'art' is too fraught, too tied to the canon, just too TOO."'

It has not been altogether easy for philoso- vhers to establish conditions for what makes something a work of art when the artworld per- sists in celebrating work that transgresses its own standards. The ability of the artworld to confer art status on individual works that fla- grantly resist inclusion in even very generous notions of what makes something art has led to a deep divide in philosophical approaches to defining art. Of late it has become common for the competing approaches to be classified as falling under the rubrics of functionalism and proceduralism. Roughly, we may think of functionalism as the view that a work should only be called art if it can be thought of as meeting the point of art, however minimally, while procedu- ralists take the position that a work is art if the artworld treats it as art. veriod.

This divide becomes particularly pointed when we are confronted with a work that appears not just to fail to do any of the things we might have thought were necessary for attaining art status, but to transgress prevailing artistic standards and norms. In this paper, I argue that procedural art-designation practices have evolved because of an underappreciated metafunction that transgression plays. When we understand that role, we can see a way to bridge the divide between art definitions that insist on honoring the point or function of art and art definitions that acknowledge the reality of evolved proce-

dural designation practices. My thesis is that only when we press functional considerations at the level of the procedures that are used to designate art, instead of at the level of each individual candidate for art status, do we allow transgressive practices the arena they require and that requires them. This conception gives us a new ap- preciation of why procedural art-designation practices have, in fact, evolved; and one that sees this as creating an enhanced-not a reduced or impoverished-role for functional considerations.

Stephen Davies argues in his comprehensive and lucid Definitions of Art that contemporary approaches to identifying the nature of art "re- veal conflicting commitments to functional and procedural account^."^ Davies presents Monroe Beardsley's work as an example of the functional approach, and George Dickie's institutional theory as a paradigm instance of the procedural approach. A functional theory of art definition is one that requires that, in order to have art status conferred on it, an object must conform to at least one general standard for what makes something art. Failure to do this defeats art status. Procedural theories, on the other hand, maintain that an object becomes art if it is designated as art according to certain privileged procedures, regardless of what functions it serves or fails to serve.

For Davies, functional and procedural theories need not disagree at any particular time about which objects we should think of as art. But there is no guarantee that they will agree, either, and he believes that it is an empirical matter of fact that art-designating procedures have parted company from the point of art, or from any functional considerations. He believes, in other words, that "much contemporary art has

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56:l Winter 1998

lost touch with the point of artu3 but is art nevertheless, having indisputably had that status conferred on it by the appropriate art-designating procedures. Davies also believes that it is cer- tainly the case that art does have a function. Were there no such function, then we would have no grounds for asserting that art-designating procedures have designated as art objects and events that not only fail to fulfill the function of art, but indeed actively subvert art's point.

For Davies, this situation forces us to choose between functional and procedural approaches ("the otherwise attractive option of defining art in jointly functional and procedural terms seems not to be viablem4). He concludes by favoring the procedural approach, on the grounds that functional approaches are forced to define as nonart many objects and events "that seem to me to have established their credentials as artworks."5

One objection to this approach is that not all theories about how best to identify works of art are adequately captured by the functional/procedural distinction. Davies acknowledges this criticism, but argues that apparently competing approaches, including aesthetic attitude, historical and intentional theories, ultimately end up being either procedural or functional. Much can be learned from pursuing those questions, but for my purposes here I grant that the functionallpro- cedural distinction does pick out a fundamental divide in contemporary art definition theories.

Davies's account has the signal virtue of rais- ing the question we started with, but it is a question on which he is largely silent. If art has a function-an ongoing function, and not merely an historical function with little or no current value for human beings-then why would our art-designating procedures have come into con- flict with the function of art? Why would art- designating procedures that do not respect the function of art have evolved?

In the course of answering these questions, I advocate a new distinction that is built on the insights of the procedural/functiona1 distinction, but ultimately allows a re-integration of procedural and functional concerns. My suggestion is that we consider functionalism at two different levels: object-level functionalism and procedure-level functionalism. Object-level functionalism insists that each art object must itself fulfill functional requirements. Procedure-level functionalism instead directs its attention to as-

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

sessing whether our art-designation procedures by and large, on the whole, and in the long run produce art that meets the function of art.Vur- ther, I propose a reason for supposing that procedure-level functionalism will in the long run meet the point of art more effectively than object-level functionalism. My argument here is that a prevalent traditional art practice-namely, the practice of repudiating and subverting past art practices-plays an underappreciated metafunction in maintaining the ongoing ability of the artworld to produce new works that succeed at the object level. I argue that object-level functionalism cannot effectively confer art status on works that exhibit the metafunctional attributes of transgression, repudiation, and subversion, and so procedural art-designation practices have evolved precisely in order to allow these values to be incorporated into art.

My alternative account has two main advan- tages: (i) It gives a reason why we should expect art-designation procedures to arise that occasion- ally, and sometimes even frequently, confer art status on objects that appear, because of their art- subversive attributes, to fail to meet the point of art. For Davies, as for other theoreticians on both sides of the definitional divide, why this happened is a mystery. (ii) My account allows for the legitimacy of functional considerations by showing how they re-assert themselves at the procedural level. Unadorned proceduralism, on the other hand, has tended to delegitimize functional questions, since previous functional accounts have insisted that these questions be raised only at the object level. This is a weakness of unadorned proceduralism, since it either falsely implies that we have lost interest in the function of art, or acknowledges this interest but denies us a framework within which to press functional questions. Procedure-level functionalism, however, admits the reality that procedural art-designation practices have evolved, provides a func-rional reason why this has happened, and establishes the legitimacy of functional questions by showing how functional questions re- assert themselves at the level of procedures.

I. WHY HAVE PROCEDURAL ART-DESIGNATION

PRACTICES EVOLVED?

Let us grant that human beings value art or that, as Davies says, it plays a function in human life.

Graves Transgressive Traditions and Art Definitions

We can conduct the following analysis without specifying the precise nature of the value of art, stipulating only that human beings appear to value art.' And let us also grant, with Davies and others, that as a matter of fact, procedures have evolved that successfully confer art status on objects, apparently without regard to whether these objects serve any art functions. The point, then, is that this poses a dilemma: art has a function, but a situation has evolved where we allow procedures to confer art status on objects that fail to meet, and even subvert, that function. Why has this happened?

On my account, this has happened for an important art-functional reason. The reason is that art-subversion plays a crucial role in the creation of future works of art that do meet the point of art on an object level, and that object-level functional designation practices are unable to incorporate subversion. Procedure-level functionalism, however, can, and that is why it has evolved.

We will start to see some of the merits of my account of procedure-level functionalism when we consider two objections that might be raised against it. These are (i) that procedures may have drifted apart from the point of art, but not for any particular reason, and (ii) that procedures have drifted apart from the point of art but for a functional reason that is entirely different from the one I propose.

(i) In instances where procedural designation practices have come adrift from the intended function of the activity, there may not be a func-tional explanation of why this has happened. After all, there is not an explanation for everything. In ethnography, for instance, we have learned to be wary of accounts that provide a functional narrative for every catalogued behavior. If a civilization in Oceania practiced finger sacrifice, there does not have to be a functional reason why this behavior evolved. It may just have happened.

Indeed, our knowledge of how institutions and rules often function has made us aware that procedures that evolved or were designed for one function can be expropriated to support entirely different functions and can even be used to subvert the original function. Davies mentions, for instance, laws that were designed to promote justice, but which are sometimes used by clever attorneys to achieve unjust outcomes for their clients.

41

Davies also points out that groups tend to de- velop their own internal dynamics, becoming "self-regulating and self-motivating"8 and de- veloping "a tendency to take on a life of their own, as it were, and in this way to drift apart from the function they were intended to serve."9 It is not difficult to imagine that this kind of drift could occur in the artworld as readily as it does elsewhere. Davies also suggests that nonfunctional external demands may have played a role in the divorce of function from procedure. He mentions the external demand that art institutions "provide employment, secure the value of investments, and so on"l0 as instances of demands that are at best tangential to the real function of art. One might add other external demands to this list, such as Tom Wolfe's con- tention that modern art can be explained by social status-seeking," or Steve Martin's suggestion in "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" that modern artists are principally motivated by the desire for an unusually abundant number of sexual partners.12

If we then take it as a fact that procedural art- designation practices have floated free of the purpose of art, we might feel entitled to wave our hand at the kind of considerations given here. The thought is, "Once procedures and institutions arise, this kind of thing happens all the time, for clearly nonfunctional and even acci- dental reasons. Why look for a functional reason to explain it?"

The point of this challenge is that when pro- posing functional explanations for the evolution and persistence of a particular tradition-in this case, procedural art-designation practices-we should bear in mind that functional explanations need to be viewed as competing against the plethora of nonfunctional explanations that are always also available. On this view, the artworld's conferral of art status on nonfunctional objects is of a piece with, and no more surprising than, the fact that some bosses expect their secretaries to pick up their drycleaning, an ex- pectation (we will assume) that does not further any legitimate business functions.

However, this situation distinguishes itself in ways that make it clearer that a functional explanation for the given state of affairs is appropriate. For instance, appreciating art is not necessary (for most of us) in order to sustain life and limb, whereas the imposed-upon secretary


may believe that he needs to fetch coffee because he needs a paycheck in order to buy gro- ceries. If we think of nonmandatory activities, however, we see that we would find it quite odd and a thing to be remarked if a group that orga- nized to preserve, promote, and exhibit Aus- tralian wildlife should evolve the practice of conducting public exhibitions where koala bears were doused with kerosene and ignited. This, however, is essentially the spectacle we have been asked to consider by Davies-i.e., a situation where procedural art-designation practices have evolved to designate art that not only is not art on any accepted functional account, but that actively subverts the point of art.l3 The evolution of antifunctional behavior, especially where there is an active ongoing demand for the function at issue, is far more mysterious than the nonfunctionalism that procedures and institutions drift into for various reasons. Gesturing to internal dynamics and external pulls is not an adequate explanation here.

(ii) The second objection that might be made to the claim that procedural art-designation practices have evolved in order to incorporate art- subversive functions that cannot be met at the object level is the claim that procedural art-designation practices did evolve for a specific functional reason, but one that is quite independent of the function that I propose. Therefore, according to this challenge, if proceduralism has evolved, it may very well have evolved in response to this alternative functional requirement.

As Arthur Danto and others have argued, art- designation practices must be procedural because (at least some) art objects do not take on the aesthetic properties by virtue of which they meet the point of art until art status has been conferred on them.14 Readymade art is often given as the pure example of this, although historically minded theorists have noted ways in which almost all art, however much it already met the point of art prior to status conferral, takes on additional important aesthetic properties by virtue of its relation to other art.

Davies presents this argument as the main argument against (object-level) functionalism. The idea here is that functionalism, since it insists that we confer art status on only those objects that meet the point of art, would not designate these pieces as art. This object-level functional demand is seen as "conservative" by

Davies and "quaint" by Noel Carroll15 in that it runs against actual artworld practices. An additional objection to this demand of object-level functionalism is that it would deprive us of an engagement with the aesthetic properties that these works can only take on by virtue of having art status conferred on them.

My reply here is two-fold. In the first place, although Davies's analysis does not allow for this possibility, pure object-level functionalism is not obligated to insist on any particular chronol- ogy of events. Object-level functionalism needs to require only that a piece have some aesthetic properties that enable it to meet the point of art as it becomes art, but not necessarily before. Thus, a pure object-level functionalist might require that when an artist contemplates an object vis-2-vis its suitability to achieve art status, she ought to have some reason to suppose that conferring art status on it will cause it to have at least one aesthetic property that will enable it to meet the point of art.

We can understand the distinction I am making more readily by looking at marriage, which is procedurally designated, although it is a functional concept. My spouse will take on relational attributes when the correct procedures are performed, and these attributes only emerge as real in the process. For instance, a man can only achieve the property of being a person who auto- matically bestows his worldly goods on me if he dies intestate by going through the appropriate spouse-designating procedure. This currently nonreal relational property may be the only property by virtue of which a particular man functions successfully as a spouse. This could be the case if, for example, he were in a persistent vegetative state and were thus unable to meet any of the more traditional functions of marriage. The point, however, is that even a person in a persistent vegetative state does take on the appropriate relational property once the marriage ceremony is performed. The salient con- trast here would be to my marrying a forsythia. As it happens, there are no procedures which will enable this bush to take on the property of being an entity that would render me the recipi- ent of its worldly goods should it die intestate.

An object-level functionalist about marriage can agree that it is acceptable for people in persistent vegetative states to be spouses, so long as they meet a function of spousehood simultane-

43 Graves Transgressive Traditions and Art Definitions

ous with the appropriate procedural designation. The functionalist is, however, committed to denying spousehood to forsythia bushes because marriage ceremonies produce no relevant spousal functions in shrubs. Similarly, an object- level functionalist about art need only require that the object exhibit (at least one) aesthetic property. In other words, an object-level functionalist is not committed to denying that relational properties can be functional, nor is she committed to insisting that the object-level analysis about how a piece meets the point of art has to incorporate any functions that are other than relational. All that she requires is that the object be the unit of analysis, and not the procedure.

My second point is closely related: the object- level functionalist objection to much contemporary art is not essentially a point about when an object got whatever aesthetic properties it may have. Rather, the objection, clearly enough, is that these pieces have no aesthetic properties or, what is perhaps more to the point, have properties that actively undermine and subvert the whole point of art, so that these properties cannot reasonably be considered "aesthetic" properties. The objection, in spousal terms, is that the artworld is marrying forsythia.

The observation that some objects only take on aesthetic properties once art status is conferred upon them is, therefore, not an adequate explanation of why procedures have come adrift from function. It is not an adequate explanation because it fails to address the problem, which is that procedural art-designation practices have evolved that have successfully conferred art status on objects whose properties, pre- and post- status conferral, subvert the point of art.

In defending this account, which is that procedure-level art-designation practices have evolved for a specific functional reason, namely, to incorporate transgression, repudiation, and subversion, I have discussed two possible chal- lenges.16 The first is that we do not need to lo- cate a functional reason to explain the observed fact (i.e., that procedures are conferring art status on objects that do not meet the point of art). While I agree that not everything demands a functional explanation, this particular phenomenon seems to cry out for one. The second challenge is that there is already a good functional reason at hand to explain this phenomenon,

namely, the fact that art status conferral can itself create the aesthetic properties by virtue of which the piece meets its function. Here, I ar-gued that this function is insufficient to explain the explanandum, which is that the art community has designated as "art" entities that, even upon status conferral, still have no aesthetic properties.

My account requires that the transgression, subversion, and repudiation of past art practices play an instrumentally functional role in the ongoing ability of the artworld to produce art that does meet the point of art. In the foliowing section, I propose two additional reasons for believing that this is the case. I then conv'd 01 er a possible further objection to my account: if repudiative practices are important, might not artists incorporate these values at the object level? If it is possible to incorporate subversive values at the object level, then of course we would no longer have any reason to suppose that my functional explanation for why procedural art-designation practices have evolved is correct. Finally, I offer a speculative psychological hypothesis about the functional role played, within art, by art-subversive practices.

11. ON EATING YOUR FATHER

Once, while Darius was King, he summoned the Greeks who were at his court and asked them at what price they would be prepared to eat their dead fathers' corpses. They replied that nothing, but absolutely nothing at all, could induce them to do so. Then Dar- ius summoned the Kallatier, an Indian people accus- tomed to eating their fathers, and asked them in the presence of the Greeks, who had an interpreter at their disposal, at what price they would agree to cre- mate their deceased fathers. At this the Kallatier gave loud screams of horror and implored him not even to utter such blasphemy. That is the way of the world. (Herodotus, The Histories,book 111, section 38)

The problem of the avant-garde is not unique to this century. Artists often produce works that interrogate or undermine prevailing political, social, or moral practices. By the problem of the avant-garde, however, we refer to the less famil- iar but not uncommon practice of producing works that subvert or undermine prevailing artistic conventions and practices. lat to noticed it, complaining in the Laws about artists who


take liberties, resulting in "vulgar and lawless innovation" of a specifically artistic kind.l7 Noel Carroll, Theodor Adorno, and Page duBois have more recently pressed the point that art history shows us a long-standing tradition of works that subvert specifically artistic practices.

Adorno proposes that the Marquis de Sade, by writing novels consisting of scenes involving sexual torture, carnage, and degradation, was re- buking the bourgeois novel for its capacity to lull its audience into unthinking acceptance of social norms. Adorno thinks that by showing how the novel "with its production line practices"l8 could be appropriated to celebrate cruelty, rape, and murder, de Sade wished to provoke readers to entertain suspicions about this art form. DuBois sees Sappho as creating poetic forms designated to undermine the dominant "mascu- line aesthetic" of Greek poetry.lg Carroll suggests that Alfred Jarry's aim in producing Ubu roi was to subvert two dominant theatrical practices. Believing that realism and bourgeois es- capism were artistic traditions that should be re- pudiated, Jarry attempted to undermine them by incorporating stylistic gestures, such as obscen- ity, "as part and parcel of a concerted effort to outrage the bou rge~ i s i e "~~ and by incorporating abstract devices in order to criticize theatrical realism which, Jarry thought, encouraged pas- sive perception.

If it is a tradition in art to repudiate prevailing art practices, why would that be? Does the transgression of prevailing art practices serve an important function? There are two approaches to take here. For some purposes, it may be enough just to establish that artists, often enough for us to notice, do produce new art that subverts older art practices or even, as has been alleged relative to some avant-garde pieces, subvert all art practice.

In philosophy of science, by way of compari- son, it has been noted that scientists value what Ernan McMullin calls "superempirical" virtues which include, for instance, simplicity and sym- m e t r ~ . ~ 'All other things being equal, scientists sometimes prefer one theory over another because of simplicity considerations. Why? If we lack an explicit account of how "simplicity considerations" actually help scientists achieve epistemic goals, such as greater predictive accuracy, does that mean that the scientific preference for

simpler theories is merely arbitrary? On the one hand, in the absence of insight into exactly what functional role simplicity or symmetry play, the fact that they are often used in scientific theory choice is sometimes wrongly taken to mean that such considerations are always a good reason to prefer one theory over another. On the other hand, the undoubted prevalence of these considerations in science suggests that they have played a functional role in the successes science has achieved. These two considerations lead to the conclusion that we may have grounds to believe that superempirical considerations do play a functional role-even if we cannot specify it-but that this evidence of its functional role does not justify its use in any particular case.

Similarly, the prevalence of practices such as repudiation and subversion in past, successful art suggests that these practices have played an instrumentally functional role in past art accom- plishments, although it may never be precisely clear how this works, just as, for instance, it is clear to philosophers of science that symmetry considerations have been instrumentally functional in achieving the epistemic goal of in- creased predictive accuracy in particle physics, although no account currently exists of how symmetry considerations lead to increases in predictive accuracy. The important fact is that scientists have successfully used such considerations, even though they do not know why they work. Nevertheless, we do not suppose that individual artists adequately account for their choice of a transgressive aesthetic when they say, "I did it that way because I like transgression," anymore than we suppose that scientists adequately justify the choice of one theory over a competitor if they say, "I prefer it because it is simpler." Sim- plicity is not a magic wand, and neither is subversion.

The purpose of this discussion is to suggest that (a) we have good reasons to assert, on art- historical grounds, the prevalence of the artistic practice of repudiating past aesthetic norms, and (b) we are entitled to suppose that, to the ex- tent that art has been successful, the prevalent practices of subversion, transgression, and repudiation have played an instrumentally functional role in this success, even in the absence of a precise functional mechanism by which these practices contribute to the overall point of art. It is important to avoid overstating this point; in-

45 Graves Transgressive Traditions and Art Definitions

deed, some philosophers of science do want to insist that "scientific rationality" has flourished through the centuries in spite of, and not because of, the fact that scientists used theory preference considerations, like symmetry and simplicity, that seem to evade characterization as rational.22 Similarly, it might be urged that art has survived in spite of frequent outbreaks of transgression, and surely not because of them. This question may yield to detailed historical investigations. For now, my purpose has been the less ambitious task of motivating the view that the mere prevalence of a practice, especially a practice that is widely seen as antifunctional, is one reason, and a fairly good one, for beginning to suspect that the practice is not as antifunctional as it seemed at first b l ~ s h . ~ 3

If we have reason to suppose that art-repudiative practices play a functional role in art, as I have argued, might this function be incorporated at the object level? If so, then object-level functionalism could work to successfully define art via a disjunctive definition. Perhaps we might add "subverts existing art practices" to the list of properties that qualify something to be a work of art.24

Of course, object-level functionalists have not been interested in adding "subverts art," "out- rages the public's sensibilities," or "undermines all standards" to their list of art-functional attributes. Critics and art publics exposed to works that do this similarly show no interest in this kind of inclusion. But if one is possible, a theo- retical approach to this question is preferable.

My proposal is that the value of art-subversive practices is almost exclusively oriented toward the future, and that subversion is only functional insofar as it facilitates the creation of future nontransgressive art. If this is so, then subversion is valued for a relational characteristic, specifically for its role in enabling the creation of future nontransgressive art. While repudiation is a determinate characteristic of a particular piece as that piece relates to the past, its value rests in the indeterminate property of its relation to the future. Since it is the future value of repudiation that gives it the importance it has, and since object-level functional designation requires judgments based on properties

whose existence can be determined either before or at the time that a piece attains art status, object-level functional designation procedures will be unable to appropriately confer art status on transgressive objects. Again, this is because the primary value of such objects is not accessible to an object-level functionalist, since it is a relational characteristic that only becomes determinate with the passage of time.25

However, procedural art-designation prac-tices, clearly, are able to incorporate repudiation. Here, at this level, we are able to appropriately re-integrate functional considerations into the institutions and procedures of the artworld. Not all repudiation is intelligent and pointed; much of it is random, silly, and childish. Induct- ing objects into arthood that exhibit repudiative characteristics that might turn out to be produc- tive of future nontransgressive art is a highly fallible business. Procedural art-designation practices allow artists, galleries, critics, museums, and theaters to make their fallible judgments as best they can. If, in the long run, particular parts of the artworld consistently put forward repudiative art that fails to ultimately lead to nontransgressive art, those parts of the artworld will collapse or become marginalized. On the other hand, parts of the artworld that nurture transgressive practices that lead to future nontransgressive art will tend to thrive.

One advantage of this account is that it de- scribes an artworld that is more consistent with mundane facts about that world than does the almost demonized picture of the artworld that emerges in some accounts. On that picture, procedural designations have become completely alienated from functional considerations, and the institutions of the artworld are-randomly or maybe even maliciously-calling things art that destroy art.

On my account, we would expect the artworld to value repudiative practices. But we would also expect the artworld to be sensitive over the long run to its ability to produce art that is functional on the object level. On any reasonable construal of the motivations of the artworld, it evinces a great deal of concern with issues of status, repu- tation, survival, and the desire to provoke admi- ration and acclaim, not just to shock and outrage. My account explains the existence in the artworld of art-subversion, but also predicts that the artworld will demonstrate, over time, sub-


stantial sensitivity to the art public's functional concerns.

IV. TRANSGRESSION A N D ART

"Where is the advantage of that?" (Monroe Beard~ley)~~

I have argued that art transgression may be rel- atively common in art history because it consti- tutes a valuable, and possibly indispensable, causal mechanism in the creation of future nontransgressive art. However, again, my account does not depend on this being the specific function that transgression plays. Similarly, a philos- opher of science might give a wrong account of how symmetry considerations function to gain predictive accuracy in the creation of new theories about how particles interact. If her account is wrong, we still have ample evidence from the history of science that symmetry considerations play a positive role in theory choice.

So, I have claimed that procedural art-designation practices have evolved, not as a contin- gent happenstance, but because procedural designation practices are more effective than object-level functional designation practices at incorporating transgression, repudiation, and subversion. I noted that repudiative practices have been prevalent in art history, and that this gives us some reason to suppose that they function to support art, even if it is not altogether clear how this works. My account makes room for the re-assertion of our legitimate functional concerns at the procedural level, where the question becomes "Is the artworld, on the whole, producing art that meets the point of art?" The sup- position that the artworld is sensitive to this kind of functional evaluation makes better sense of how the artworld actually responds over time to the art public than do accounts that imply that the artworld has, judging from its apparent rapt inattention to producing "real" art, been taken over by the Pod People from Another Planet.

Here I conclude, with a speculative psychological hypothesis of the mechanism by which art-subversive practices might tend to enable the creation of nonsubversive art, or art that meets the function of art directly on the object level.

Harold Bloom has proposed in his long and influential career as a literary critic that art is born in the crucible of "the anxiety of influ-

ence."27 What he means by this is that mature artists come primarily from the ranks of those people who experience unusually powerful reactions to particular pieces of past art. They become artists, on his account, partly to exorcise their sense that they have been emotionally, spir- itually, or mentally dominated by another mind and partly in order to exercise this same domi- nation over other minds. In his development, the artist comes to feel that if he is to find his own voice, the art that represents his own standard of the ideal must be in some sense overcome or de- stroyed.

What does a new artist need to do in order to fashion his or her voice into an instrument as powerful as the instruments of what appear, in the young artist's eyes, as predecessors who have already achieved perfection? My hypothesis is that the existence of forceful transgressive voices in art communities, even if the transgression is ugly, deformed, antifunctional, and de- structive, helps future creators of great works begin to see the heretofore invisible fault lines in the works that created and formed their own artistic psyches. It enables them to believe fully that their new voice is needed.

As Herodotus tells us, pagans ate or cremated their dead fathers. In other traditions, we wor- ship an endlessly perfect father whose offspring are treated with considerably less reverence. My proposal has been that artworlds are only able to continue to create great new works because at least some members of those artworlds adopt an aggressively pagan attitude toward their ances- tral achievements, practices, and norms. That is why procedural art-designation practices have evolved, and it is also why those procedures, but not all individual pieces of art, are themselves subject to ruthless and ineliminable functional considerations. Function reigns, but not at the object leve1.28

LESLIE GRAVES 5367 Country Trunk C Spring Green, Wisconsin 53588

1 . Timothy Inca-Munch, as quoted in The Chronicle of Higher Education 43, no. 14, November 29, 1996, p. B9.

2. Stephen Davies, Definitions of Art (Cornell University Press, 1991). p. ix.

Graves Transgressive Traditions and Art Definitid

3. Ibid., p. 102. 4. Ibid., p. 38. 5. Ibid., p. 217. 6. Procedures can be, and are, evaluated by considering

whether they raise the likelihood of certain preferred outcomes. For instance, we can build mathematical models that allow us to calculate the effect on a population of instituting procedures designed to, say, promote ideals of fairness, as Brian Skyrms does in Evolution of the Social Contract (Cam-bridge University Press, 1996). However, adequate quantita- tive measures of a procedure's contribution to a preferred outcome are almost always unavailable.

7. Is it important to be more precise about the function of art? What if art has multiple functions, or what if they change over time? It is quite possible to model the evolution of functional systems over time without specifying what the function is or whether there is more than one functional demand. An interesting example of this is Sewall Wright's shifting balance theory of species formation; this theory models random drift as an antifunctional event that allows isolated small populations to retreat from previous adaptive peaks, allowing natural selection a new lower platform from which to create different adaptive peaks that may end up being more suited to the new circumstances in which that population finds itself. His point is that it is the existence of this antifunctional element that is precisely what allows the population to meet its overall functional requirements (whatever those may happen to be). For a helpful treatment, see William Provine's Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biol- ogy (University of Chicago Press, 1986).

8. Davies, p. 95. 9. Ibid., p. 31. 10. Ibid., p. 220. 11. Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word (New York: Bantam,

1976). 12. Steve Martin, Picasso at the Lapin Agile (Chicago's

Steppenwolf Theater, 1994). Some modem artists may have this as their primary motivation, but presumably not all, although Galen Strawson noted recently in passing that "great art ... probably has a lot to do with sexual selection" (Times Literary Supplement, November 29, 1996, p. 3).

13. An anonymous referee for this journal points out that if art does not have a fixed and eternal point, then it is not possible to conclude with reference to any particular piece that it subverts the point of art. My account only requires that given pieces subvert existing practices, although one might argue for a broader claim on the grounds that if art practices change beyond a certain limit, it would be idle to continue to think of the new practice as "art."

14. Arthur C. Danto, "The Transfiguration of the Com- monplace," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1974): 139-148.

15. Noel Carroll, "Historical Narratives and the Philoso- phy of Art," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51 (1993): 325.

16. While it is possible to think of the acts of transgression, repudiation, and subversion as having somewhat different extensions, for our purposes here it is their similar intended effect of undercutting established practice as radi- cally as possible that is important.

17. Plato, Laws, 700-701c. The artists Plato condemns were flouting the specifically artistic traditions of that time in order to better please their audience, while today's avant-

garde is seen by some as flouting tradition in order to avoid pleasing their audience. Plato writes, "as time went on, the poets themselves introduced the reign of vulgar and lawless innovation. They were men of genius, but they had no perception of what is just and lawful in music; raging like Bac- chanals and possessed with inordinate delights, mingling lamentations with hymns, and paeans with dithyrambs; imi- tating the sounds of the flute on the lyre, and making one general confusion; ignorantly affirming that music has no truth, and, whether good or bad, can only be judged of rightly by the pleasure of the hearer." For an illuminating discussion of this passage, see Jonas Barish, The Anti- Theatrical Prejudice (University of California Press, 1979). pp. 26-27.

18. Theodor Adomo and Max Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Con- tinuum, 1993), p. 117.

19. Page duBois, Sappho is Burning (University of Chicago Press, 1996).

20. Carroll, p. 320. 21. Eman McMullin, Rationality, Realism and the Growth

of Knowledge (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1989). 22. However, see Malcolm Forster and Elliott Sober, "How

to Tell When Simpler, More Unified or Less Ad Hoc Theo-ries Will Provide More Accurate Predictions," The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (1994): 1-35, for a surprising account of how simplicity considerations, which have been derided as "merely aesthetic," often translate in a precise way into achieving greater predictive accuracy.

23. The investigative strategy of inferring function from prevalence when we are faced with traits that are prima facie nonfunctional is not uncommon in evolutionary biology. The prevalence and persistence of apparently antifunctional traits such as, famously, the peacock's tail does not establish func-tion. Rather, the claim is that looking for function in these circumstances has often proved to produce insights about previously invisible functions. See Helena Cronin's The Ant and the Peacock (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 97.

24. A disjunctive definition in this situation would also not capture why some subversions are art, while others are merely criticism.

25. In assigning transgression an important role in the creation of future nontransgressive art, I do not wish to deny that transgression pure and simple is seen by some denizens of the artworld as having an obvious and immediate value. It excites people to think of themselves as helping to bring down the fabled-the stagnant, listless, mold-covered, mind- numbing, putridly excrescent-walls of Jericho. Whether these acts of destruction lead to anything in the future is quite a different question. At least sometimes, on my view, they do, which lends them a new and interesting value that quite transcends the mere, but undisputed, pleasures of dis- memberment.

26. Monroe Beardsley, "An Aesthetic Definition of Art," in What is Art? ed. Hugh Curtler (New York: Haven, 1983), p. 25. Since I am offering an answer, Beardsley's cri de coeur bears repeating in its full glory: "Many objects exhibited today by the avant-garde evidently do make comments of some kind on art itself, but these objects may or may not be artworks. To classify them as artworks just because they make comments on art would be to classify a lot of dull and sometimes unintelligible magazine articles and newspaper reviews as artworks, and where is the advantage of that? To

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classify them as artworks just because they are exhibited is, to my mind, intellectually spineless, and results in classify- ing the exhibits at commercial expositions, science museums, stamp clubs and World's Fairs as artworks. Where is the advantage of that?"

27. See, for instance, Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994).


28. This paper originated in James Anderson's philosophy of art seminar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the spring 1996semester. My thanks to James, N d l Carroll, Jeff Dean, an anonymous referee for this journal, and especially to Sheri Ross for comments, guidance, and conversation.

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