A Note on Titles

Artworks always left Bloore's studio essentially untitled to avoid limiting the viewer's range of interpretation. They are simply what you visually experience them to be. And, to paraphrase Fernando Pessoa, what you see is who you are.

Certain dealers however did early on assign reassuringly evocative names to pieces, sometimes with the complicity of the painter. And these titles have entered the public record.

Paintings often got nicknames in the studio, usually humourous ones, The Golden Snakes, The Blue Bum, but they were let pass. Nicknames for a few of the series were used for reference on the backs of paintings and in naming their exhibitions. These lapses had extraordinary impacts, ranging from the very positive allusions of “The Byzantine Lights” to the inappropriately whimsical “Dark Chocolates.”

Titling and other attempts to extraneously enhance art are a natural part of the art business and Bloore, as an art historian knew this well. Resistance was necessary and obviously futile. To the artist titles are utterly irrelevent but to art lovers they can be critical. As the universities grew more and more and the students grew less and less, Bloore watched the extraneous enhancements of our declining culture overwhelm and abolish art itself.