A Study of “Title” Function in Transferring and Turning of Concept in Visual Conceptual Art

By paying more attention to “concept” of artwork in Postmodern and Contemporary Art, and with the advent of Hermeneutic and Intertextual topics in art, attentions to “title” effects on transferring and turning of concept have increased. Conceptual Art has concerned with these effects more than the other movements because, “concept” is its central pillar. The “title” has an important and undeniable place in visual conceptual artworks due to “language” and “writing” importance in these works. The purpose of this study is identifying of “title” function in visual conceptual art and “title” effectiveness on audience's perception of these works. The article has been conducted on the basis of a Sequential Multi-Method including Semi-Experimental, and Content Analysis methods in 2 steps. the researchers have been experimented “title” effects by semi-experimental method on perception of the sample group members of 2 visual conceptual artworks in the first step. Each one of these two works which made by the researcher have been presented to respondents in 3 situations in which that has been requested them with a separate questionnaire including an open-ended question in order to write their perception of the artworks. These situations for the first visual conceptual artwork are “without title”, titled No.1: “Love Elixir Fell on My Copper And...” and titled No.2: “Nothingness”. In the second one they are “without title”, titled No.1: “Modernity” and titled No.2: “Looking for Authenticity Preservation”. The information has been processed using content analysis method in the second step. In this way the authors have code concepts of the questionnaires text sentence by sentence. At first they have collected all codes and studied on them. Then, the researchers have combined similar codes together and the general codes came to being. The questionnaires contents have been rewritten on the basis of these general codes. The authors have counted absolute and relative frequency of the general codes in all of 3 situations for each two artworks and presented in tables. The results have been analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The authors have based Set Theory in qualitative study part of “title” function and following that, they have been able to measure 4 factors in respondent’s perception: the amount of ‘limitation”, “expansion”, “unity” and “changes”. This research also has calculated the amount of concept “turning” by these titles which have opposite implications. this article has innovation not only in applying combined methodology in art territory studies, but also in studying “title” effects quantitatively. The results show that “title” in a visual conceptual artwork is considered the part of a work itself and it’s not something separate from it. Furthermore, “title” involves in transferring visual conceptual artworks concept and can change their concept between 70% to 80% and turning it between 50% to 64% and concentrate it into some concepts that itself predicate on them, but cannot thin it out into one. “Title” is also able to limit audience’s perception of these works between 47% to 61% and expand it between 19% to 32% and create new concepts.