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How Important (or not) is a Title?
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Message
Posted
There are a couple of people who post regularly who do not give a traditional title to their work. One in particular uses computer generated titles intended to make the viewer decide what they are seeing, rather than putting a subject in their mind, and I can see a value in this. I actually like some of his work and have commented accordingly but I don’t find computer generated titles attract my attention as such. Another uses titles such as UD3 etc, and I don’t see much point in this.
Of course if it’s a scene of somewhere recognisable, I’m sure most of us want to know where. I also believe that an amusing or catchy title attracts attention. Some have more emotion attached and so on.
What does everyone else think? How important is a title to you as an artist and as a viewer?
Tessa
Posted
Isn’t a title part of the presentation ? exactly like a mount or a frame.
Numbers and computer generated stuff usually turns me away..well, when I see them on the gallery. Must admit I didn’t realise some are computer generated.
Short and sweet I think works well, as the painting should say it all. I’m not a fan of long winded explanatory blurbs. I think my shortest title was “DOG” .
Posted
The 'I want the viewer to decide what he is seeing without being guided by the title' doesn't work for me. My eye is always drawn to the image before the title. It's odd that people who claim this give nonsensical titles, which must stir up the brain cells in some way, whereas the only 'neutral approach would be to give no title at all. I find the computer generated titles veer between the pretentious and the preposterous.
Posted
What's traditional? Where does 'tradition' start and end? Many abstract painters used numbers—Untitled 43—for example. I'm not sure that titles 'should' be anything.
I find humorous or amusing titles a turn-off simply because they very rarely are. And I react negatively to fanciful titles; I think because they seem to reference that sickeningly cloying Victorian moralist 'tradition'.
I don't know why anyone—other than a serious surrealist or Dadaist maybe—would want to computer-generate a title and it would make me doubt their sincerity I think. Does that matter? No not to me and not to them either I suspect, but if they don't take their work at least a bit seriously then why should I?
Considering it now, without doing any methodical research at all, my thought is that the vast majority of the works of art we are likely to see in a city or national gallery are descriptive in their titling; Sunset, or Still life with banana and teapot. Or similar. That's also my preference for my own work.
Posted
I know these issues have been discussed before so, at the risk of repeating myself, here are a few of my thoughts on the matter.
Firstly it seems to me, all paintings need a title if only for identification purposes and nothing else so the idea of not giving a work a title seems plain daft.
Then we come to the 'I want the viewer to decide what he is seeing without being guided by the title' debate, well I don’t go along with giving titles which do not describe or hint at the subject matter. But how descriptive or prescriptive they are is a personal matter. An anecdote; some time ago I exhibited a painting in Leicestershire which I called ‘Leicestershire Fields’. It didn’t sell so I put it in an exhibition in Northamptonshire and called it ‘Northamptonshire Fields’ – and it sold.
However I do support the 'I want the viewer to decide what he is seeing without being guided by the title' debate when it comes to abstract work. I am continually amazed at the different interpretations people place on my work which adds to the interest and the fun of it. Most people in my experience look at a painting then at the title before deciding how they interpret it - if I called it say ‘Cosmic Flight’ then that’s all the viewer would see. For this reason my abstracts (as opposed to semi-abstracts) are all given one word titles which have no recognised meaning but, hopefully, steer clear of the pretentious and preposterous.
Putting it simply I ‘invent’ a word which, although it has no meaning, somehow reflects the ‘feel’ of the work. The Nonsense Word Generator site can be helpful in this.
Also I find that by giving my work such titles people who would normally walk on by are drawn in and show greater interest.
Posted
I often regard "untitled" as a cop out. If the artist doesn't know what is going on why should I?
Abstract titles from a Generator might be ditto, but they certainly are when it's something like "UFG.ahgg" or other "artybees"
Surely as artist knows his or her inspiration??? So tell me. If it's uninspired art then it's not art.
Posted
The trouble with titles is that for landscapes at least, one tends to be a bit specific - e.g., A View of Piddletrenthide - and there's always someone who sidles up and asks you just where you were standing when you painted that, because they don't remember a stile being there, and doesn't that distant building have three chimneys, not the two you've painted; and those fences don't look quite right.... Now obviously one encourages such people to wander into a disused lift-shaft, because one does get a little tired of explaining that 'It's MY view!', and 'it's not a (expletive deleted) photograph!'. Sometimes I look over my glasses at them (it helps if they're smaller than you: they usually are) and say something to the effect that 'topographical exactitude is no longer a requirement, since the invention of the camera'; but even that degree of condescension palls over time.
So I tend to make my titles a little vague and generic, to counter the 'but it don't look like that, do it?' brigade. I think paintings need a title though - I haven't exhibited for some time now, but when I last did I noticed that people do like to know roughly where they are, and appreciate a hint as to what they're looking at - if you're a portraitist, you wouldn't normally entitle your work 'Portrait No. 9' - you'd give it a name; 'Portrait of Clair'; 'Mrs Clutterbuck-Wotherspoon in her Conservatory' - something people can relate to. Or in the second instance, perhaps not - but you get the point.
In passing, I wish I could do abstracts: but I have this awful tendency to impose a shape on them, which stops them being abstract at all - except in the sense that I suppose all paintings are somewhat abstract, in that they're an illusion or representation of reality - but these are deep waters into which I do not choose to wade.
Posted
David (and maybe Michael too ): calling a work Untitled is giving it a title. Isn’t it?
I throw in that Untitled is a title most frequently used in abstract painting (without doing any research on the matter, I have a feeling that the New York abstract expressionists produced a lot of untitled works). Often it’s clear that the subject of the painting is simply exploring paint and the painting process itself.
Also I have a faint memory of seeing something from MoMA about one of the abstract expressionists (de Kooning I think but the memory is weak). The title of one work was derived from the initial impulse and the first marks on the canvas, all of which were covered by later painting, thus there appeared to be no connection between the title and what you would see, uninformed.
Robert: a galley owner once told me—no ‘suggested’, told is too strong—that it would be better if I didn’t use place names in my titles as, she reasoned, if a you are exhibiting in an area where people are not likely to be familiar with those places, it might well put off the prospective buyer. I thought about that but decided that as my landscapes are very much about being there in that place, it wouldn’t work for me at all to not identify the place. Also Wheat filed at Marsh Farm, for example, is just a better title than Wheat field I think. Although I do have one called A field of barley.
David: the inspiration and the title do not necessarily have such a close connection. Like Michael, I have changed the location, although this was usually done either during the process or upon completion. Maybe I started with one sketch in one location (the inspiration) then changed my mind because as the work developed it became something else. I have changed the name of a work when complete because it reminded me more of a different place—different to the sketch that inspired it that is.