Title your work

 Dear artists,

Title your work.

None of this Untitled 1 and Untitled 2 nonsense. If you are an artist, and this is a work of art, then it deserves a name and you should name it.

If you don't title your work it shows a distinct lack of emotional engagement with this thing that you have produced - heck, it shows something of a lack of intellectual engagement with it as well. You are an artist, not an artisan. You are "creating art", not making a cabinet. Heck, sometimes even cabinets get names, if they're fancy enough. Title your art.

People need to be able to talk about what you've created - they need to mention it too each other. Without the words to discuss things with each other, they lose meaning. They stop existing, just a little bit. If you were making a cabinet, they'd say "the cabinet in the lounge room". But you are making art. You are making something that is, let's face it, useless. It serves no purpose, apart from engaging people's minds. If they have no words for it... 

Well, it becomes useless, nondescript, purposeless and barely existent.

Sure, they could say "the artwork in the lounge room", but, then, it really does render your work no more special than the average cabinet.

Or, they'll make up their own ways to talk about it.

There is a work of art in my work place. It is called Untitled, but we never call it that. Most of us have our own names for this work. That might sound like something an artist might aspire to - to inspire people to engage with the art so well that they name it themselves, based on what the art means to them.

Some people might work that way, but they are quite possibly the exception, rather than the rule. Most people will just call it what it "kind of looks like".

This nameless artwork is a plinth topped with two half-spheres held together with a curved bar. I call it "the Prince Albert" - and I'm not talking about the person. Everyone in the office has heard me call it that at least once, and there's a good chance it will be known as "the Prince Albert" long after I leave. It has no other name, and I refuse to call it "Untitled". That's not a name. As far as I'm concerned it's a bigger insult than "the Prince Albert".

Would the artist care if they knew exactly what I have named their art? What right do they have to care? They didn't care about it enough to name it themselves.

Dear artists, title your work.