• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.600-611
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• 2016

This study examined the impacts of types of titles of artworks, especially 'untitled', on audience reponse. Generally, naming can be a tool to represent characteristics of objects, affecting their market value and price. Since contemporary artworks are often untitled, this study aimed to investigate how naming 'untitled' would affect audience response. As the size of arts market increasing, how the audience, potential buyer of artworks, responds to artworks is important. Based on prior research, we hypothesized that the audience would have different level of understanding, attention, attractiveness and curiosity to untitled artworks, controlling other factors. In the regression results from the data of 305 respondents, we found that people had significantly lower level of understanding and attention on untitled artworks than on artworks of explanatory or associative titles. In addition, respondents showed significantly higher level of curiosity when the artwork was an painting. This study confirmed the assertions of prior research that titles are indeed important, and further implied that artwork creators should be more concerned on naming their artworks since titles as well as artworks themselves could actually affect audience response.