A Critique of the ‘Author Function’ Concept in Art History

Abstract Since the 1970s, the incorporation of European critical theory into the academic discipline of art history within the Anglophone context has become an established scholarly convention. This article aims to attend to one example of this institutionalised referencing practice: Michel Foucault’s notion of the ‘author function’ as explicated in the famous essay, ‘What is an Author?’ From Craig Owen’s attempt to develop a ‘materialist cultural practice’ to Caroline Jones’s recent exploration of the ‘artist-function’ in the reception of Robert Smithson’s work, Foucault’s concept has proved to be a rich source for art historians. That being said, the deployment of ‘author function’ has, as I will show, come at the price of a more careful examination of Foucault’s essay – one that does not permit the seamless reproduction, via a citational practice, of a concept from one study to the next.