Does Your Art Need a Title?

Watercolor by Suzanne Lorenz

Have you ever looked at art and felt frustrated when a piece (or all of them) are entitled ‘Untitled'?’

If you have, you’re like me. You need context. You need things to have labels. Otherwise, how can you understand what you’re looking at? How can you figure out how you feel about what you’re seeing or hearing?

But you might not be like me. You might like to experience your art directly. You don’t need, or even want someone telling you what they were thinking when they made the piece, or what it symbolizes, or what they want you to feel. You want to take your art straight. You want your own experience.

Chances are, your clients are like me. They probably need context, explanations, stories. They probably don’t even know how to experience, let alone buy, art without interpretation. This is something to consider when you start selling your work.

The funny thing about this question is that how people experience art generalizes to how they experience life. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to judge, but I’d rather be in the second category. I’d rather trust myself to experience art/life directly, instead of needing someone to give me the playbook, the context, the meaning of something. I’d like to trust enough to experience things without filters or someone else’s interpretation.

Which type are you? Which are your clients?

Because your work matters, it makes sense to figure this out.