Social functions of art

Social functions of art

During class, we discussed about a piece of “art” submitted to the society of independent artist for an exhibition. The piece was accepted as per rule but wasn’t displayed. This was because the organisers/museum curators believed that the piece titled “fountain” did not serve a social purpose. This prompts a question : 

“should all works of art present a social function?”

But first, we must look into what social function are. According to “A dictionary of media and communication”, social functions are defined as “The general roles that communicative acts, or a medium of communication, can be seen as serving for society as a whole as opposed to simply for individuals.” Looking into it, I disagree with this question.

A piece of art can mean anything and can express any emotion that the artist desires. I believe that artists can be selfish and make artworks that have a personal meaning to them and don’t really serve a social function. For example, a poet can write poems about their sadness. This might not serve a social function as the poem isn’t used for anything significant but is still art because it is an expression of an artist’s feelings through an artistic medium.

If we do agree with this statement, several pieces of art might get dismissed and no longer be considered art. Sometimes there might be mistakes made too when the audience it too quick to judge that the work doesn’t hold a social function. As mentioned earlier, the fountain was dismissed this way too. The fountain is an example of ready made art and a urinal is the entire piece. Due to the prejudice against urinals, people were too quick to dismiss, the prejudice and internalised bias preventing the audience trying to interpret and come up with their own belief on the piece. However as people started learning what the art meant, they quickly learned that it had a lot of symbolism in it. Hence, my conclusion.