"Museum of the Mind": An Inquiry Into the Titling of Artworks

This article begins by posing the question of whether titles of artworks are important for the viewer and/of the artist. A series of examples illustrates some ways in which titles structure artwork meaning and shows how titles function as implicit messages for the viewer. Inquiry into the artist's perspective on titling is provided by examining material from research interviews with three contemporary artists. It is proposed that certain formulations about language can be integrated with a phenomenological notion of an "aesthetic space" to conceptualize how titles work. Werner and Kaplan's (1963/1983) concept of dynamic schematizing activity and Black's (1962, 1979) interaction theory of metaphor provide a way of seeing title-artwork relations and the meaning-formation potential of titles. The conceptualization of an aesthetic space in which titles function as messages about artworks draws on Schutz's (1962) concept of provinces of meaning and on Jakobson's (1960) notion of the speech event.