An alphabetized list of the titles of all 1,620 paintings in the Fitzwilliam collection, Cambridge, UK. The words have been detached from the images they support and from their companion data-sets of artists names, dates and materials. Now they find themselves corralled into an alphabetically regimented list, an inventory informed by art historical conventions, clichés and the idiosyncrasies of individual archivists.
They range from intricate description to abstract obfuscation. This new grouping creates unexpected juxtapositions and narratives while exposing similarities and anomalies. Some titles are unique, others find they are but one of many, some are just one word while others are over thirty words long. We are reminded that when subject to the systematization of an archive, objects become, to some extent, a homogenized stream of data, fragments of a historic continuum.
Most of the paintings in the collection would not have been titled by the artist as t . he practice of giving artworks 'official' fixed titles was established by dealers, collectors and archivists as recently as the 1800s.