Thus spake "Gerardo @neorigami.com" <[email protected]> on 7/29/15 2:51 PM:
>I had asked here if the institutionalization of the popular name Kawasaki >Rose was a unique case. David Mitchell mentioned some other examples, >declaring that this phenomena is rather random, and approving the >addition of the creator's last name when mentioning a model. I suggest (and attempt to follow) making a distinction between the artist's title for his/her artwork, and a generic description--either possibly with qualifiers (like the artist's name), which may be useful when the artwork title is relatively generic, or the artist has given multiple works the same title. I think we should strive to use the artist's specified title, when known, and format it as a title. So, in the case of Kawasaki, for example, the design on page 123 of RO&M is titled "Rose". As a title, a proper name, one would normally capitalize the title (as I just did), and I further emphasize the fact that it's a title by putting it in quotes (or you could use italics, depending on your typesetting style). It is helpful to think of the artist's title as being treated the same as the title of a book, painting, or musical composition. Since quite a few origami artists have created artworks with the title "Rose," it will often be helpful to distinguish _which_ "Rose" we're talking about: thus, Kawasaki's "Rose", or Yamaguchi's "Rose," et cetera. (Or Kawasaki "Rose"; I don't think the possessive is necessarily mandatory.) Now, we might also refer to a design generically according to its subject: thus, Kawasaki's rose (lower case, because here it's not a title) might be Kawasaki's "Rose" (RO&M, p. 123), or Kawasaki's "Rose Bud" (RO&M, p. 118), or perhaps one of the others. Way back in the olden days, origami artists tended to give their designs fairly generic titles: "Bird," "Fish", "Blue Whale," etc., that were nothing more than a statement of the intended subject. Neal Elias broke with this tradition early on, for example, "Llopio's Moment of Truth," rather than "matador, cape, and bull." I liked that. I think it's a nice practice to give a design a more meaningful title than a simple generic descriptor. (In my own work, sometimes I do, sometimes not.) Whether the title is generic-sounding or distinctive, I think it's a good practice to use the artist's title and set it off (with capitalization and quotes or italics) because it helps maintain the connection between the artist and his/her artwork. One the one hand, it's a sign of an artwork's impact and distinctiveness when its title becomes a generic term: "Have you folded the eastern dragon?" a correspondent asks, and of course we know he's likely referring to Kamiya's iconic "Eastern Dragon." By using the title that the artist gave to the work, though, and denoting it as a title, it helps preserve the connection between the artwork and the artist, and it's a reminder to our readers that origami designs didn't just materialize out of thin air: they came about because some particular artist engaged in the creative act. Regards, Robert
