Untitled: A Look at Titles

You’re at a museum and a piece catches your eye. You stop and read the description only to find that it’s called “Untitled.” Maybe you feel ripped off. Maybe you think the artist was slacking off. Maybe you’re annoyed that the creator couldn’t give you just a little more, a simple name for what this object that was made (supposedly) from their heart and mind….soul. Maybe it makes you angry that someone can make something abstract and have it viewed by the masses in a museum–in musuems around the world–when you know perfectly well you could have thrown that paint on a canvas too. Maybe the title–“Untitled”–makes your experience of the piece in front of you feel incomplete somehow. And you don’t like this feeling of “incomplete.” It’s a scooped out, hungry and wanting feeling that you want nothing to do with. And you certainly don’t want to see it put on display.

Or…

Maybe the non-name has another meaning. Maybe it’s an invitation. Maybe the lack of a “name” welcomes the opprotunity to BE with the creation that allows you to experience the creator’s experience of BEING. Maybe it’s an introduction to a thought or feeling that only humans can perceive. Maybe it’s a doorway into a secret place inside of you…of all of us…that shines a light on all of The Created as we mosey around and bang up against the other named and unnamed among us. And the light asks “Who needs a title anyway?” The light is the question: “Must everything have a name?”

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What titles do you want to untitle?

#blessingwithakick