To Title or Not to Title: Is That the Question?

Creating art, for many artists, means sharing the creative, passionate side of themselves with the world. Perhaps the intent is wrapped up in nostalgia and evoking the familiar or calling to mind sweet memories of the past.

Perhaps it is about bringing the beauty of landscapes or the simple (or complicated!) things in life to their audience. Do you want to influence your audience to see something in particular? Naming your piece would be a good idea in that case.

Or Not to Title

Other times artists’ intend their audience simply look: to observe the colors and texture of the piece. Do you want to give your audience the freedom to simply see what they see, interpret and enjoy it without suggesting, by a title, what they should be seeing? In that case, you may decide to leave it untitled as I do.

But artists know that no matter what they intend, viewers have minds of their own, and hooray for that! Viewers see what they want to see regardless of the artist’s intentions. In fact, some artists title their artworks yet they become nicknamed despite these designations, as with James McNeill Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black, which became know as Whistler’s Mother.

So many artists couple Untitled with a numerical system of recording that Untitled might be the most common title of all. Plein air and landscape artists often use the date or the time of day a work was made as inspiration for a title. Others, the location where the work was made.

Some artists struggle with titles. Others think of phrases out of thin air, or name works after a song that was playing at the time they were painting. Others enjoy clever titles that add layers of communication to the experience. Some artists want to convey meaning, others want to confuse.

Naming or not naming your artwork has its pros and cons. If you decide not to, definitely come up with a system that allows you to talk about the work in a descriptive capacity (to a gallerist for instance), especially if you work abstractly.

Above all, spend time thinking about how your work communicates and what you want out of that give and take. It’s a guarantee that your viewer will receive a variety of perceptions from you as a creative “engine.” Does naming or not naming your piece play a part in that? I think so. Now it is up to you what you do with that. Enjoy!

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Thanks Ginny! So many exciting pieces of the puzzle to think about and play with. I for one will own that my one consistency with titling artworks is that I am inconsistent. I’ve named them, numbered them, and left them “blank.”

As Ginny says, there is no wrong answer. But we would love to know if you title your art or what naming conventions you like or aren’t so jazzed about. Leave a comment, and let us know!

Courtney