Some art objects arrive in public with elaborate titles and some with none at all (untitled), their makers fearing titles will be held against the work or unnecessarily narrow the frame of its references. For every title that makes the piece and sends it like a surface to air missile into the stratosphere, there are plenty that limp along, poisoning the goods.
The non sequitur is an infrequently used but fertile stratagem. I thought of it while reading about Bookseller magazine’s prize for the oddest title of the year, via Diane Mapes.
Calling an individual piece the Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter would guarantee it a second look. Other potential winners in the name-that-artwork game include Collectible Spoons of
the Third Reich, Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous
Robots, and, my personal favorite, Reusing Old Graves.
If Anne Siems had called her painting Reusing Old Graves instead of Velvet Forest, I would have begun to look in a better frame of mind. (At Grover/Thurston Gallery)
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