Untitled (But Titled)

Richard Nickel
Untitled (Garrick Theater)
ca. 1958
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Sonia Gechtoff
Untitled (Tamarind #869)
1963
lithograph
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Joel Meyerowitz
Untitled (JFK $40)
1964
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Ralph Eugene Meatyard
Untitled (Nude Portrait)
ca. 1968
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Scott Hyde
Untitled (Magazine Page)
1969
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Claes Oldenburg
Untitled (M. Mouse)
1973
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Brett Weston
Untitled (Snow-covered Mountains)
1973
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

June Harwood
Untitled (Jigsaw)
1975
acrylic on canvas
Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College, California

Elizabeth Murray
Untitled (Dress)
ca. 1998
charcoal, pastel and crayon on paper
Menil Collection, Houston

Rachel Whiteread
Untitled (Basement)
2001
plaster
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Lucas Samaras
Untitled (Head Chest Liquid)
2003
inkjet print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Cyril Hirtle
Untitled (Pepsi Man)
before 2003
watercolor and ink on board
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Tim Gardner
Untitled (Family Portrait 2)
2004-2005
pastel on paper, mounted on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mark Grotjahn
Untitled
(Lavender Butterfly / Jacaranda over Light Green)
2004
 oil on linen
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Raymond Pettibon
Untitled
(They put their Fates in the Hands of Providence)
2004
gouache on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Thomas Nozkowski
Untitled (8-61)
2005
oil on linen, mounted on panel
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Ludwig Schwarz
Untitled (LBC4)
2015
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

from Over 2000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance

Thus should have been our travels:
serious, engravable.
The Seven Wonders of the World are tired
and a touch familiar, but the other scenes,
innumerable, though equally sad and still,
are foreign. Often the squatting Arab,
or group of Arabs, plotting, probably,
against our Christian Empire,
while one apart, with outstretched arm and hand
points to the Tomb, the Pit, the Sepulchre.
The branches of the date palms look like files.
The cobbled courtyard, where the Well is dry,
is like a diagram, the brickwork conduits
are vast and obvious, the human figure
far gone in history or theology,
gone with its camel or its faithful horse. 
Always the silence, the gesture, the specks of birds
suspended on invisible threads above the Site,
or the smoke rising solemnly, pulled by threads.
Granted a page alone or a page made up
of several scenes arranged in cattycornered rectangles
or circles set on stippled gray,
granted a grim lunette,
caught in the toils of an initial letter,
when dwelt upon, they all resolve themselves.
The eye drops, weighted, through the lines
the burin made, the lines that move apart
like ripples above sand,
dispersing storms, God's spreading fingerprint,
and painfully, finally, that ignite
in watery prismatic white-and-blue.

                    *        *        *

Everything only connected by "and" and "and."
Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges
of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)
Open the heavy book. Why couldn't we have seen
this old Nativity while we were at it?
– this dark ajar, the rocks breaking with light, 
an undisturbed, unbreathing flame,
colorless, sparkless, freely fed on straw,
and, lulled within, a family with pets,
– and looked and looked our infant sight away.

– Elizabeth Bishop (1955)