Hidden message of love

The photo on top is titled “The Hidden Message of Love”. All you have to do is to find it.

Or not.

Or it is just a snap of a pile of stones I did with my phone.

Baptizing an abstract work with a clever title has the benefit of directing attention and thought of the viewer towards those issues that are most likely to sell. 

You’d pay much less attention to the photograph, have I named it “No.46”.

An abstract artist that stays true to abstraction goes simply with “Untitled” or numbered paintings/sculptures. Like Mark Rothko. And I respect him for that.

A commercially concerned artist goes for fancy names to sell his or her work. Like Pollock. “Full Fathom Five” or “Lavender Mist”. Like Procter and Gamble naming their toilet cleansers or air fresheners.

Naming an abstract work is either its automatic betrayal, or the artist’s confession that he wanted to paint “Lavender Mist” but didn’t have the skill required to do it properly.

Don’t name them, abstract thoughts. Just say them and listen to the echo. If there’s no echo, perhaps, they were not worth the paint, or the audience. You’d never know.