ABSTRACT
When the title ‘Untitled’ started appearing beneath paintings, it corresponded to the claim of abstract painting to be nonrepresentational: to be ‘painting’, simply —just as we have learnt to say, more recently in literature, ‘writing’, and, with Beckett, ‘Film’. It is a title that represents the non-representational. Now, since the titles of paintings-place-names, personal names, the names of historical or legendary events, or kinds of subjects-designate not only their represented subjects but also, through the naming conventions themselves, their genres, the title ‘Untitled’ claims above all to transcend genre. Reflect on this. For ‘unititled’ paintings are themselves a genre; and the title ‘Untitled’ points to genre in the very act of its denial. It is metageneric, inextricably implicated in and implicating the problem of kinds in its spectacular failure to not-classify.
