Art is used in design and decorations of objects

The argument

Functional art for decoration and design seeks to beautify objects that are used in life. Examples include ceramics, glassware, basketry, jewelry, metalware, furniture, textiles, and clothing. This purpose of art is among the oldest. Decoration of Japanese ceramics goes back to about 14,500 BCE. A number of Mediterranean civilizations have also used art for decoration of ceramics. Since then, decorative art continued to be used throughout history and until today.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Showing that art beautifies useful objects establishes that art can accompany a function, not that function is the purpose of art. The examples cut the other way as easily: a decorated vase is functional as a vessel, but its decoration is precisely the part that serves no utilitarian end — the aesthetic surplus added on top of a use the ornament does not perform. That surplus is what most theories of art point to as the point of art, with the object's utility incidental to it. The antiquity of the practice, from Japanese ceramics onward, shows only that people have long combined beauty with useful things; longevity of a use is not evidence that it is the purpose. The argument at most demonstrates that decoration is one purpose art can serve among several, which is compatible with expression, beauty, imitation or communication being primary and function being marginal. It does not show that art is functional in nature rather than aesthetic, so it under-determines the position it is meant to support.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That art beautifies useful objects shows art can accompany a function; the decoration is typically the non-utilitarian surplus on an object whose function the ornament itself does not serve. [Rejecting P2] The antiquity of decorative art establishes that the practice is old, not that function is the purpose of art rather than one use among several.