"S/ Título"

Abstract

This thesis intents to demonstrate that the title, being an element of the work of art, is essential to its full understanding. Since the beginning of the History of Art as a discipline, the titles have been accompanying works of art almost exclusively for the effects of cataloguing and circulation. Nonetheless, with the freeing of painting from its mimetic purposes, titles began to acquire another kind of importance, becoming, definitively, the textual element indispensable to the visual understanding. The maximum of abstraction is the monochrome, the pure visual silence – the degree zero of painting. When facing this silence, the public often suspends the understanding of the work. We aim to underline the importance of the title as a vehicle of meaning, establishing the bridge between art and its public, especially in cases of extreme abstraction, when the visual clues to interpretation are reduced to its minimum