I spent a long time thinking that artists shouldn't be allowed to title their own artwork, but now I have to file that notion under "misguided" along with the idea that poets shouldn't be allowed to read aloud their poems. The truth is, in my opinion, that most people shouldn't be allowed to title any artwork, and most people shouldn't read poems out loud in public.
The poem thing came from the handful of people in my creative writing classes years ago who tried to read their works for class but it all just came out sounding wrong. It was too formal and halting, with unnecessary pauses at the end of lines in poems, and a deadly montone. Bleh.
My belief regarding artwork comes from cornball titles such as (and I'm just making these up to give you the idea) "The Lone Sentinel" for a painting of a lighthouse, or "Old Faithful" for a drawing of a rusty old wrench, or "A Little Slice of Heaven" for a painting of a flower garden. I usually want the painting to speak for itself. If the title is going to be evocative, I want it to avoid cliché and tell me something I didn't expect. Otherwise, I just want it for identification purposes.
That's what I use titles for, identification. Uh-oh, I just realized that my block print of garlic is titled "Garlic Lovers." Well, heck, sometimes it's hard to resist being cute. But at least it's not a chronic affliction for me. At least I was shooting for a double meaning.
Don't give me a hard time about this. I know some who read this will want to do so. I don't favor taking away people's rights to title their own artworks. I'm just brandishing my right to say a huge percentage of titles are aesthetic poison. I find "The Lone Sentinel" much less interesting than "Montauk Point Lighthouse, March."
By the way, I just Googled "Montauk Point Lighthouse" to see if there was one, and there is. I figured there had to be. It's very pretty.
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