Have you ever wondered how artists titles their work?

Or wondered why the heck they chose that title? It’s a bit of a dark art really. Should you dredge up words from the subsconscious, remember old song lyrics, consult a thesaurus, or what?

I’ve been thinking about titles lately. My new series is somewhere around the mid-point, but a couple of pieces are probably done. I took a moment a few days ago to look at all the paintings in progress and wonder what their names will be.

What is a title for? Obviously, it helps to identify a piece. I give each painting a number for my catalogue, as well as a title. That way the painting has a consistent identifier even if I change my mind about the title. But #2107 isn’t very exciting. It lacks appeal. Titles don’t just identify, they can also describe, explain, connect with viewer, intrigue, or give a little clue about the artist or their intentions.

Titling styles

Through history painters have chosen all kinds of titles. Incredibly long titles like Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate, a Second Before Waking Up by Salvador Dali or Joan Mitchell’s George Went Swimming at Barnes Hole, but It Got Too Cold don’t grab me. These two tell you a story about the impulse behind the painting, but they’re quite the mouthful.

Landscape painters often tell you the location of the painting, which is very straightforward. I’m thinking of Cezanne’s paintings of Sainte-Victoire which have made that mountain in the south of France a pilgrimage spot for his fans. I like knowing the spot. I like knowing which harbour Matisse was looking at in his paintings too.

For abstracts, which are my primary interest, your choices are more wide-open. Jackson Pollock came to feel that titles interfered with the viewer’s experience. He gave us scintillating titles like Number 5, 1948. As he said in an interview with William Wright, viewers should:

I take his point, but for those of us not changing the course of art history, perhaps this is less of a concern? Frankly, numbered titles piss me off. Perhaps it’s my tendency to transpose numbers into letters, or just poor number memory, but I can’t remember which one’s which if they’re just numbered.

What I like

Myself, I like a title that intrigues or suggests, but doesn’t give away the whole plot. And as the person who maintains my website, I also appreciate a concise title. After you’ve typed a title on 10 photographs and various media libraries, longer titles get a bit tedious. And yes, I think about this when I’m naming paintings now.

One contemporary artist who’s titling practice resonates with me is Robert Szot. He doesn’t always keep them short, but most are pretty intriguing. In an interview with Paul Weiner he mentioned a piece called Flood Law. They’re two words/ideas he liked. And they happen to be cross streets in New Orleans that he passed one day. (The interview is in Szot’s book Let Me Do This which I recommended in my last blog post.)

Like Szot, I keep a list of possible titles, with lines from song lyrics, words I love, intriguing lines from my poems. If a word or string of words grabs me, I write them down. I recently went through all my poems and picked out phrases that I particularly liked. I’ve been writing poems since I was a kid, so this was a long project. I did it in those dead times of the day (hello 4pm!) when I feel I ought to keep working, but don’t really want to do anything challenging. I’ve got a nice long list of possible titles now.

My favourite so far

Of my own work, my favourite title so far is Drip the Lily. It’s a riff from the phrase “gild the lily” which is a misquote of Shakespeare (the history play King John). In this painting there’s no gilt, but it is a bit drippy. Lily is a reference to Monet’s water lily paintings, because the little flash of pink and green at the lower left reminded me of those paintings. And I just like the way it trips off the tongue.

Upcoming titles

I’m working on a new series, but I’ve got 2 that are almost certainly done. Both of these titles were pulled from my poetry. Friendly, But Far is the title of a minimalist, pastel coloured painting in my new series. The poem it comes from is an appreciation of a particular dog’s approach to people. He loved to sit near us, but far enough away that we couldn’t touch him. Hot Jam, Late June is the title for a painting that reminds me of that time of year—the colours, my mum in the kitchen stirring hot jam, and the feeling of being a young kid off school for the summer. Check out my Instagram to see a photo of Hot Jam, Late June.

Really, it’s just a gut thing. Something resonates. Sometimes I just know, no question. Other times I put the title on a sticky note and put it next to the painting on my wall. If it still feels right after a while, then that’s it. I’ve got a title.

And you?

What kind of titles do you like? Do you have any favourites—from history, from contemporary painters? If you’re an artist, what’s your approach?

I’d love to get your take on titling. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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