The gallery wants a title before the paint is dry

Got the email from the gallery in Berlin at nine this morning. Their press person needs titles, dimensions and a short statement for the November show by Friday. The show is in November. Four of the seven canvases are still leaning against the wall in the state I would call "arguing with me."

I know how this sounds. Naja. But I cannot name a painting before it has stopped moving, and one of them has been moving since March. The last time I named something early I ended up calling a big grey thing "Zwischenräume" and then spent six weeks painting towards a word instead of towards the picture. That is the wrong direction of travel entirely.

So now I have a list of provisional titles in a notebook, all of them bad, and a deadline that exists because a printer in Kreuzberg needs it, not because the work does. I will send them something. I always do. But it will be a lie in a small, administrative way.

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Kasia Nowak·3h

The Zwischenräume thing, that is the real danger and you said it better than the gallery ever could. Painting towards a word instead of towards the picture. I work in pastel and I have done this to myself with a face, given it a name in my head too early and then spent a week making it look like the name.

Four of seven still arguing is not a problem. The one moving since March though, I would want to ask it quietly if it is moving or if you are just not finished looking at it. Sometimes for me the difference is not in the canvas.

Can you give them working titles and change them in October? Or is the press person going to print them in some catalogue that cannot be undone? 🙂

Camille Laurent·2h

The pastel face example is the honest one. It is easy to blame the word but really the name just gives permission to stop looking.

On the one moving since March, I would push back a little. Sometimes it is the painting and not the looking. I have had one that kept moving because the drawing underneath was never right, and no amount of quiet staring fixed it. Worth asking which of the two it is before October.

Working titles, yes. Just keep them dull. "Grey, upright" is a title that cannot pull you anywhere.

Lukas BrandtOP·2h

The drawing underneath, ja. That is the sentence I did not want to read this morning and probably needed to. I have been assuming it was a looking problem because looking is the thing I am supposed to be good at, and a bad drawing is just work.

So I went and stood in front of it properly after lunch. It is the drawing. There is a diagonal in the lower third that I have been painting over for months and the paint keeps sliding off it. Not moving at all, actually. I have been moving around a fixed thing.

"Dull" is right as well. The temptation is a title that sounds like a thought, and then you spend the rest of the time trying to deserve it. Grey, upright. I can live with that until October.

Lukas BrandtOP·2h

The question about whether it is moving or whether I am not finished looking is a good one, and I do not have a clean answer. Probably both. I have had paintings that were done for months and I kept going back because I had not yet seen them properly, and I have had ones that were genuinely still wet underneath.

Working titles, ja. I do that anyway, but I keep them ugly on purpose. "Grey thing, four metres" and so on. The trouble starts when the working title is a good word, because then it is already a title and I am already painting towards it. So the gallery can have the ugly ones and I will change them in October if the pictures have earned something better. Whether they accept that is another matter. They want the statement in September because the printer wants it, and the printer is not interested in my epistemology.

Dani Okafor·2h

The Zwischenräume bit is the part that got me, because you're naming the exact trap. A title isn't a label you slap on afterwards, it's a frame you can't unsee once it's there. Six weeks painting toward a word is real, it happens. But also, and I say this as someone who is currently avoiding a spreadsheet, the gallery doesn't need the true name on Friday, they need a placeholder that sounds like a title. I've started doing "study" and a number for anything still arguing with me, then renaming it the week before install when the thing has settled and stopped fighting. Feels like cheating to me every time and it has never once hurt the work. Four out of seven still moving in October sounds less like a problem and more like a show that's actually alive? What's the one that's been going since March doing now, is it still changing or is it just refusing to be done

Ananya Iyer·1h

The "study and a number" thing does feel like cheating, I agree, but I think the cheating feeling comes from treating the title as part of the artwork rather than part of the paperwork. The gallery's press person is not going to hang the placeholder on the wall. If it helps, I've started keeping the real name in a notebook and the number on the form, and the two never meet until install week. The one that's been moving since March though, that one I would genuinely leave alone. Some paintings need the whole run before they'll tell you anything.

Lukas BrandtOP·1h

The notebook and the form never meeting, that is a good discipline. I might steal it. Though I suspect my problem is the reverse of cheating: once the number is on the form I stop looking for the real name altogether, and in December I have four canvases called Study 4, Study 5, Study 6.

On the one from March, ja. You are right and I half knew it, which is why I wrote the post instead of just filling in the form. It has had the whole run and it still is not telling me. That used to frighten me. Now it mostly means I have to be patient with it and impatient with the press person, which is the correct order of things.

Lukas BrandtOP·2h

"Study" and a number, ja, I have done that too and it never quite sat right. But you are right that the gallery needs a placeholder and not the true name. The mistake I made with Zwischenräume was not naming early, it was that the placeholder sounded too good. I liked it. A good-sounding placeholder is the dangerous kind. If the working title is "Study 4" nobody, including me, falls in love with it. So maybe that is the discipline: name it badly on purpose until it earns a better one.

The spreadsheet avoidance I will not comment on.