Fine Art: How to name artworks?

- How to name artworks?

“Artists use titles to illustrate, explicate, confound, frustrate – or justify a tax deduction. Even Untitled suggests a meaning.”
- Kelly Devine Thomas, 2005

While name of artwork remain an important part of the artwork, itself, they remain an enigma to most viewers and even to artists, themselves.

Artists have been inspired by cities, songs, people, emotions, philosophy, literature, and practically everything under the sun. James Whistler named his artworks after musical compositions, while others such as Picasso and Cézanne let their friends and colleagues name their works.

While some artists and experts claim that titles can control what the viewer sees, most artists and experts agree that naming the artwork is an important part of the work, itself. In the words of Leo Steinberg, the art historian: “Titles are important. They are like clothes you wear when you step out of doors.” Gallerists, curators, researchers, and other professionals also often complain when the works are not titled. In the case of untitled works, Robert Rosenblum of Guggenheim Museum and New York University stated: “I can never find the one I am looking for”. Baldessari believes that not naming a work is a “copout” on the part of the artist.

Often artworks are about communication, using titles can be used to emphasize what the artist is trying to articulate, in his her work. Additionally, from the perspective of the collectors and viewers, a title can suddenly add more weight to the artwork. For example, an abstract painting, in blue and yellow, is suddenly more attractive to a collector if is called “Sun and Ocean” or a portrait of a woman is more tempting if it is named, say, after a romantic poem “I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You” by Pablo Neruda.

Create, look around, invent – or the other way around, there is no limit to fascinating names.

INTERESTING FACTS AND NAMES:

- Pablo Picasso´s Les Demoselles dÁvignon was originally named The Philosophical Brothel.
- More Love Hours Than Can be Repaid, Wall Hanging, Mike Kelly
- The Banality of Evil, Rock Painting, Daniel Lefcourt
- Lick and Lathe r, Soap and Chocolate Sculpture, Janine Antoni
- Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? , Paul Gauguin
- The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Livin g, Tiger Shark in Formaldehyde, Damien Hirst
- My Heart Belongs to Dada but I know Motherwell, John Baldessari

Allan Majotra, PicassoMio.com and PicassoMio Galleries