46 44 – 2014 Articles Ian Verstegen A Functional Theory of Post‑Modern Art Abstract This paper proposes a new functionalist way of thinking about post‑modern works of art (broadly conceived) by suspending the typical expectation that works of art serve to impart aesthetic experiences. Using the theories of Rudolf Arnheim, the criterion is switched instead to experience. In this way, the typical shortcoming of functionalism is overcome while restoring what is intuitive about the theory. Thus, against standard functionalist theories that dismiss works like Duchamp’s urinal or Warhol’s brillo boxes, this paper afirms the ubiquity of this conception of art, which is opened up as experi- ence, because these works enhance our experience of the world. What this revised functionalist theory assumes is that even though works of art do not provide aesthetic experiences exclusively, they are nevertheless bounded as artistic statements. But this boundedness does imply simplicity in any sense. “He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.” 1 One of the obstacles to the enactment of a moderately objectivist form of aes- thetic judgment is the lingering afirmation that works of a post-modern nature cannot be assimilated to normal standards of judgment. Moreover post-modern art, art that deals in allegory, paradox, irony, appropriation, is popularly seen to eschew aesthetic and any kind of formal properties. The most famous theory of post-modern art – the “art world” thesis promulgated by Arthur Danto – precisely weighs the balance of art on relational factors bestowed by the art world where formal factors can be “indiscriminable” from ordinary objects. 2 Thus, Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes are no different from real Brillo boxes; what makes them art is that they have bestowed with such a quality by the art world. More recent functionalist theories of art have reached a similar stalemate by asserting that functionalist principles still hold although there are exceptions that prove the rule. So, Warhol’s Brillo Boxes or Duchamp’s urinal may be 1 J. Ruskin, Modern Painters, John Wiley and Sons, New York 1890, Vol. I, p. 12. 2 A. Danto, The Transformation of the Commonplace, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1981.