POST #156: TO SIGN OR NOT TO SIGN? (a good question)

An art dealer I know came by recently, looked at my work and commented: ”You shouldn’t sign on the front. Nobody does that anymore.” Of course the “nobody does that anymore” raised the hackles (what are hackles?) on the back of my neck. “I do!”  I angrily replied. And I explained that I didn’t do it out of “ego,” but because the composition required it, needed a touch of “something” in the lower right or left. I hate people who make rules for artists. Real artists don’t follow rules but I’m sure the ones he represents no longer sign their work on the front since he told them “nobody does that anymore.”

His condescending remark brought out the quarrelsome art historian in me. When did artists begin to sign their work? Certainly not in antiquity, although there’s an occasional identifying mark. The best example I could think of was ancient Greek pottery where craftsmen of note (i.e. Euphronius) proudly lettered their names onto their work. An occasional medieval artisan left his mark: “so-and-so fecit,” but for the most part, artists were considered craftspeople producing work in service of rulers or gods. When did this change and why?

I started checking in with my knowledgeable friends. We all agreed that for the most part signatures appeared when art became a commodity. If art was now to be bought and sold on an open market, you needed to know who did it to establish its worth. Seventeenth Century Dutch art is probably the first time artists routinely signed their works as there were now literally thousands of artists producing paintings for a newly rich merchant class.

And so it went for the next two or three hundred years with most art either signed or definitively attributed.  When we get to the Modernist era, the 20^th century, a signature usually appears, modestly, in an unobtrusive corner. Some artists, like Stuart Davis in his later years, incorporated the signature into the design of the piece. Davis made his signature an integral part of the painting. one that represented the completion of the process of painting. I found a great quote from him on the subject:

“Manufacturers put their name on your refrigerator and automobile. They’re proud of it, So I thought, if it’s going to be there, it ought to be a decent-looking thing. In the context of a total composition, you plan a place for it and regard it as an object.”

Picasso had a very distinctive signature that he frequently incorporated into the design of his work.  He used his mother’s maiden name rather than Ruiz, his father ‘s because he thought it looked more interesting. It’s only recently, that it has become unfashionable for artists to sign their work. In my humble (unasked for) opinion, the current tendency to leave work unsigned is a kind of phony bravado, telling the viewer that if he or she is knowledgeable about art, they will immediately recognize who did it. Besides, so much current work is chaotic and gimickky that one would have difficult finding place to put a signature or locate it if there was one.

Anyhow, I sign and date most (but not all) of my work. I have no hard and fast rule. I like the way my signature looks; it’s a final flourish that says (proudly) “R.Kahn.” However, I noticed that my most recent paintings remain unsigned, not because as my dealer friend insisted, it has become unfashionable, but because it would ruin the composition which I like to think is perfect as is. I used to tell my art students that a work of art was finished when you could not add (or subtract) a single thing – even a signature.