What’s in a title?

I'm going to write a bit about how artists name their paintings and why it matters.

A good title can do for a painting what a score does for a film: it sets the mood, offers a key, and sometimes tells you how to listen. Artists choose titles for many reasons including cataloguing, teasing meaning, protecting mystery, or simply because a line from a poem felt like it matched their painting. As a gallery owner I've seen all manner of titles but there are a few common approaches (including how I work). It's important to remember that the tiny strip of text on the wall can change how someone feels about your painting.

Why titles matter

Titles can add a whole new dimension to a work. They give viewers a kind of foothold — a hint, a contradiction, a joke, or a backstory — so they slow down and look more closely. Galleries, teachers, and art-writers often point out that a title can turn "curiosity into emotional investment." You might like a painting visually, but read its title and love it. Practical reasons also matter: titles help with inventory, searchability, and press. Titles are both functional and expressive — they’re part of the work’s voice.

How artists pick titles (the ways I and others do it)

• Borrow from books and poetry. I often pull a phrase or line out of a book of poems or a novel — sometimes the cadence of a few words fits a painting better than anything I can invent - writers are writers for a reason. i think literary titles can add a bit of texture and open associative pathways for viewers. I have a few books of poetry that have hundreds of phrases underlined and words circled. 

• Crowdsource on social media. I’ll post a work-in-progress on Instagram and ask followers for title ideas; people often suggest surprising angles (if you know my paint tube paintings the word "angles" is a little tongue-in-cheek) I wouldn’t have thought of, and it’s a good way to get people involved in the conversation. 

• Descriptive or cataloguing titles. Sometimes as a gallery a straight, clear label is best (useful for series or commissions).  If you are going to do numbers for a series - write them on the back of the painting, plesae.

• Playful, ironic or deliberately oblique titles. Some artists prefer to misdirect or to add conceptual friction between word and image. It's a painting of a bear but it's titled "This is not a Bear."

These are all legitimate choices — none is “more correct” than the others. The key is whether the title supports the painting’s intent.

Here are few historic examples from the internet:

• Salvador Dalí — The Persistence of Memory: Dalí’s title casts the melting watches not just as surreal spectacle but as a meditation on time’s malleability and memory’s hold. The Museum of Modern Art provides context on the painting and its title in the MoMA collection entry. The Museum of Modern Art

• Edward Hopper — Nighthawks: Hopper’s one-word title nails the painting’s nocturnal mood and urban loneliness; the Art Institute of Chicago’s catalogue entry highlights how the title and image together create an atmosphere rather than a literal scene. Art Institute of Chicago

• James McNeill Whistler — Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (aka “Whistler’s Mother”): Whistler’s formal, musical framing of the work as an “arrangement” reframes a portrait as an abstract composition — the title itself is a statement about how he wanted the painting to be read. Obelisk Art History

• René Magritte — The Treachery of Images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe): Magritte’s famous caption under a painted pipe is a direct, clever comment on representation — the title and inscription force you to think about the gap between image and word. Museum entries and Magritte resources unpack how essential the text is to the concept. René Magritte

In a gallery when the title becomes a revelation

I’ve watched this happen many times: a collector lingers, likes the composition, but is still hesitant. They read the title on the wall and it's a great title and it flips their response — suddenly the painting has a story or a moral or a joke, and they see it differently. That small nudge is part psychological (titles guide interpretation) and part social (a titled work feels finished, considered, “owned” by an artist’s intention). A thoughtful title can make a painting more accessible and memorable.

Quick tips if you’re titling your work

• Try the library first: poets are generous with compact, resonant lines.

• Test titles out loud and on friends or followers — does it invite curiosity or shut it down?

• Decide whether you want to guide interpretation (descriptive).

• Keep catalog needs in mind (unique titles help with inventory, search and sales).

• Remember: a title can be revised. If it feels wrong you can always change it.

Titles are small, but they do heavy lifting. Whether you take a phrase from a poem, borrow a friend’s suggestion from Instagram, or invent a private code, that short line connects image to language and invites someone in. Just please don't leave a piece "untitled," that's not very interesting and for a gallery it makes life just a little bit harder.