Untitled: The Mystery of an Un-named Artwork

Have you ever wondered why artworks might be called Untitled? I know I have.

For me, finding an object label is all part of the experience of understanding and appreciating the artwork in front of me, and perhaps even deciding if I truly like something or not. A title, or the lack of one, can play a big part in that voyage of discovery. But there can be many reasons an object in a museum has Untitled on the label, so let’s explore them.

For some artists, naming a piece of work, whether it’s a painting, novel, sculpture, or piece of glass, can be a significant, defining moment. The last word, so to speak, on their finished project. But for many artists, their work goes out into the world untitled. Pablo Picasso, for example, apparently refused to title his work, preferring the art to speak for itself. He often let galleries and dealers handle this formality, which makes you wonder, who really did name Guernica or The Weeping Woman, or, indeed, Untitled?

Perhaps, by choosing not to title a particular work, the artist wants viewers to approach it without any preconceived notions, without a name denoting its potential meaning or symbolism. Experiencing the artwork in this way can be refreshing, a viewer might feel like they are the very first person to see something, forming their own impressions as they go, and perhaps even inventing their own name. This makes you wonder, is untitled really untitled, or is it blank, is it an invitation? Is Untitled actually the name or the absence of a name?

Perhaps it went unnamed and had the Untitled designation bestowed upon it by a gallery or museum, much like Picasso’s method. Or maybe the artist is also unknown, or the title lost over the years. Ancient artifacts in a museum’s collection often don’t have titles until a curator or registrar gives them. But did those objects once have names thousands of years ago, titles long forgotten or faded, lost to history? Has it always been human nature to name things, or not?

Perhaps the artist spent all their creativity producing the work and didn’t have anything left in the tank, so they forewent a title, just happy to finally release their finished work into the world. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, not all glass artists are writers, and vice versa.

Are there good titles and bad titles? Is an artist just bad with names? It happens! Names can be tricky. Does the name define the work or the other way around? And can a bad title ruin an artwork? (I can certainly think of some movies that have suffered this fate.)

The more you think about it the more questions you might have, but whatever the reason, artwork can be enjoyed with or without a title. Here is a selection of the untitled works on view at The Corning Museum of Glass. If you could name them, would you, and what would that name be?

Mary Shaffer, 1975, 2006.4.71

This is one of Shaffer’s first attempts at fusing and slumping industrial sheet glass. Is that why it remains untitled, did the artist know there was more to come as they explored this new technique?

Andre Billeci, 1967, 70.4.98

Billeci was a designer for Steuben and a research consultant for CMoG during his career. This small purple and blue piece conjures up memories of watching bubbles floating upwards in a soda glass.

Nicolas Africano, 2008, 2010.4.22

This sculpture is a cast glass representation of the artist’s wife, Rebecca, which begs the question, why did he not name it after her?

Klaus Moje, 2006, 2009.6.8

This abstract composition reminds me of a cliff face presenting millions of years of geological history—stacked layers of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock. I see marble veins and glassy obsidian in the horizontal black streaks.

“Placing a title on a piece is so incredibly difficult. Especially when you have invested so much time in its creation,” says Rïse Peacock, Curatorial Assistant at The Corning Museum of Glass. “As an artist and a curator, sometimes I weave in and out of being ‘Artist Rïse’ and ‘Curator Rïse,’ but either way, I often find myself hung up on titles because I know what the work is in my mind, but there truly is no way for me to anticipate how an audience will interpret it. I think conceptual artists are hyper-aware of this, hence why the use of Untitled might be common.”

“I also see a pattern of Queer artists using Untitled for their works,” Peacock continues. “Many Queer artists work from a place of identity politics and they come from the belief that the personal will always be political. For this reason, the way in which a viewer experiences a piece made by a Queer artist is reliant on the interpersonal relationship between the work and the viewer. When you leave a work Untitled it allows space for the viewer to place themselves in the work.”

Many other renowned glass artists collected by the Museum over the years have untitled works that are not on display at this time, such as Bertil Vallien, Mark Peiser, Livio Seguso, Toots Zynsky, Roni Horn, and John de Wit (all pictured below).

Perhaps the most iconic among them is an object by American artist Roni Horn, whose Untitled in question was on view during the grand opening of the Contemporary Art + Design Wing in 2015 but has since been moved. The subtitle for this remarkable piece is: “The peacock likes to sit on gates or fenceposts and allow his tail to hang down. A peacock on a fencepost is a superb sight. Six or seven peacocks on a gate is beyond description, but it is not very good for the gate. Our fenceposts tend to lean and all our gates open diagonally.”

This unusual addition to the Untitled moniker is inspired by the writing of American novelist Flannery O’Connor, but why is it Horn’s secondary title, what could it possibly mean, and how does it affect our understanding of the work as we gaze upon it?

So, are we any closer to solving the Untitled mystery? Perhaps not, but I know I have a little more perspective now every time I come across an artwork and a label declaring it Untitled. I hope you do too.