By Atlanta Weiss
Who are we?
Who are we beneath the identities we have acquired?
Are we our bodies? And if so, does our identity change as our bodies change through age, experience and time?
Are we our thoughts? If our thoughts arise, disappear and contradict one another, what remains continuous? And who, precisely, is thinking them?
Are we our names?
A name is a particularly curious phenomenon. We use it to identify ourselves, yet it is not identical to the person it identifies. It accompanies us through life, appears on official documents, introduces us to strangers and may survive us by centuries. Nevertheless, it remains a designation, not an explanation of who we are.
This distinction becomes particularly intriguing when a name is inherited not merely as a family designation, but as a legacy. In families where names pass from one generation to the next — sometimes explicitly marked by Senior, Junior, or successive numerals — a name can carry an extraordinary weight of ancestry, achievement, expectation and reputation.
To bear such a name is not simply to be identified as a member of a family; it is to inherit a sense of belonging, a history, and often an implicit understanding of what it means to be worthy of that name. The name becomes so deeply intertwined with identity that distinguishing the individual from the legacy they carry can become remarkably difficult.
Yet the continuity of a name should not be mistaken for the immutability of identity.
Names can be inherited, rejected, translated, shortened, reinvented or bestowed by others. They can reflect social circumstances, political pressures, cultural affiliations and personal ambitions. Sometimes they reveal something of the individual; at other times they conceal more than they disclose.
For artists, this distinction becomes particularly significant.
The history of artist names and pseudonyms offers a particularly revealing way to examine this distinction. Across centuries, names have functioned as expressions of artistic identity, markers of social recognition and instruments through which reputations are established.
Before a work of art acquires a title, an exhibition history or a place in a collection, its maker already carries a name.
We tend to treat that name as an unproblematic biographical fact, a stable connection between the creator and the creation.
Art history suggests otherwise.
Some artists become famous under names inherited from their families. Others choose the names by which they wish to be remembered. Some acquire nicknames from their contemporaries, while others receive their lasting identities only after death, when scholars reconstruct the careers of individuals whose original names have been lost.
Occasionally, the name itself becomes an expression of artistic independence.
The history of artistic naming therefore raises a question extending far beyond nomenclature:
Who possesses the authority to define an artist’s identity — the artist, their contemporaries, or posterity?
The answer lies somewhere between personal intention, social recognition and the cultural processes through which artistic reputations are constructed.
1. Tintoretto and the two Canalettos: artist names and inherited reputations
In Renaissance Europe, the distinction between a family name, an occupational designation and a nickname was frequently fluid.
Consider Jacopo Robusti (1518/19–1594), one of the central figures of Venetian Renaissance painting.
He is remembered almost universally as Tintoretto.
The name means the little dyer, referring to his father’s profession as a cloth dyer.
What began as a reference to a family occupation became the name under which one of the most ambitious painters of sixteenth-century Venice entered art history.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington notes that Robusti adopted Tintoretto as his professional name and that the association with his father’s occupation was well established in historical accounts.
The distinction is revealing.
Nothing in the meaning of Tintoretto anticipates the extraordinary visual ambition of his paintings, their monumental compositions or their dramatic spatial inventions.
The name did not describe his artistic achievement.
Rather, artistic achievement transformed the meaning of the name.
Another Venetian painter, Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697–1768), became celebrated under the name Canaletto, a diminutive derived from his surname, Canal.
Trained initially in theatrical scene painting, Canaletto became one of the most accomplished painters of vedute — meticulously composed views of cities, architectural monuments and urban life.
His representations of Venice became particularly desirable among aristocratic travellers participating in the Grand Tour.
Yet the story of Canaletto’s name introduces an unexpected complication.
His nephew and pupil, Bernardo Bellotto (1722–1780), also worked under the name Canaletto. Bellotto sometimes signed his paintings Bellotto de Canaletto, drawing upon the artistic recognition associated with his uncle.
The two painters shared not only a professional designation but, particularly during Bellotto’s early career, remarkably similar visual approaches.
Their overlapping identities have created lasting problems of attribution.
The National Gallery in London holds an early painting by Bellotto, Venice: The Grand Canal facing Santa Croce, which entered its collection in 1910 as a work by Canaletto. Its attribution subsequently changed as Bellotto’s distinctive artistic personality became better understood.
Bellotto later established his own reputation through panoramic views of Dresden, Vienna and Warsaw.
The distinction between the two painters gradually became clearer, although in parts of Europe Bellotto remains known as Canaletto.
This unusual history demonstrates that artistic names are not always exclusive possessions.
They can be inherited, borrowed or employed to signal affiliation with an established artistic reputation.
And when two artists share a name, the task of distinguishing their work may continue for centuries.
Today, Tintoretto and Canaletto signify far more than the modest linguistic origins of their names.
They refer to distinctive bodies of work, recognizable artistic languages and established positions within European art history.
A name need not be conceived as an artistic statement to acquire lasting artistic significance.
Time, reputation and cultural memory can transform an ordinary designation into something extraordinary.
2. El Greco: the identity assigned by others
The case of Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541–1614) introduces another dimension.
Born in Crete, trained within Byzantine artistic traditions and subsequently active in Italy and Spain, he became known as El Greco — the Greek.
The designation identified him through his geographical and cultural origins.
Yet his artistic achievement was anything but confined to a single cultural identity.
His painting brought together Byzantine conventions, Venetian colour, Italian Mannerism and the religious imagination of Counter-Reformation Spain.
The name emphasized his origins, while the work developed through the encounter of different visual traditions.
Here, naming becomes a form of social classification.
Society identifies an individual through a characteristic it considers distinctive. Over time, that characteristic becomes attached to a body of work whose significance greatly exceeds the original designation.
El Greco’s case raises an important question:
To what extent does a name describe who someone is, and to what extent does it preserve how others have perceived them?
A name can record an external judgment long after the circumstances that produced that judgment have disappeared.
3. Picasso and Rembrandt: the reduction of a name to its essence
Other artists exercise more direct control over the form in which their names enter public life.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was born Pablo Ruiz Picasso, carrying the surnames of both parents.
As his artistic career developed, he increasingly signed his work with his mother’s surname alone.
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona confirms the importance of María Picasso López and the eventual adoption of her surname as her son’s artistic signature.
The result is one of the most recognizable names in art history.
Yet the significance of Picasso is retrospective.
The name was not inherently remarkable. It acquired its cultural weight through the work, the extraordinary development of the artist’s career, and the recognition accumulated around it.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669) provides a related example.
During his established career, he began signing his works simply Rembrandt, abandoning the need to include his full name.
The National Gallery of Art identifies this distinctive first-name signature as a characteristic feature of his mature artistic identity.
Picasso concentrated recognition around a surname.
Rembrandt established it through a given name.
Both illustrate a process through which the artist’s name becomes a concentrated sign of authorship.
However, the apparent simplicity of the result should not obscure the complexity of its development.
A recognized artistic name is never merely a linguistic construction.
It represents the accumulated relationship between the person, the work and the world in which that work circulates.
4. Hokusai: the artist who did not remain one person
Western conventions may encourage the assumption that a professional artistic identity should remain consistent throughout a lifetime.
The career of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) offers a radically different perspective.
According to the British Museum, Hokusai used more than thirty artistic names during his long career.
Among them were Shunrō, Sōri, Hokusai, Taitō, Iitsu and names associated with his passionate dedication to painting.
Different designations accompanied changes in artistic affiliation, style, professional circumstances and stages of life.
In the Japanese tradition of gō, artistic names could be adopted, inherited from teachers or passed between members of artistic lineages.
It would therefore be historically inaccurate to interpret Hokusai’s many names simply as exercises in modern personal branding.
Nevertheless, the philosophical implications are compelling.
For Hokusai, a name did not necessarily represent a final identity.
It could indicate a particular stage of artistic development.
The artist could change without losing the continuity of his practice.
This challenges the assumption that authenticity requires a permanently fixed public identity.
Perhaps artistic identity is not a finished possession but an evolving relationship between the maker and the work.
A new name may reflect a genuine transformation rather than a break with the past.
Continuity does not always require permanence of form.
5. Tamara de Lempicka: the construction of an artistic persona
In the twentieth century, the deliberate shaping of an artistic name became increasingly connected with professional independence and public self-representation.
Tamara de Lempicka (1898–1980) offers a revealing example.
The Polish-born painter became one of the defining figures of Art Deco, recognized for her stylized portraits, sculptural figures and distinctive synthesis of classical and modernist influences.
Her artistic identity developed through successive forms of her name.
According to the artist’s estate, during her early professional career she signed works T. de Lempitzky, using a masculine form of her married surname. The estate associates this choice with her desire to be taken seriously and to command prices comparable to those of established male artists.
Later, Tamara de Lempicka became inseparable from the sophisticated public persona she cultivated.
Her name was not an entirely invented pseudonym. It developed from her married surname, which she subsequently adapted and stylized.
Lempicka’s case illustrates how naming, appearance and artistic practice can contribute to a deliberately constructed public image.
Yet her carefully cultivated persona should not be mistaken for the totality of the woman behind it.
A public image can be an intentional creation without being identical to personal identity.
6. Toyen: the freedom of an identity beyond conventional classification
Where Tamara de Lempicka cultivated a distinctive public persona, the Czech Surrealist Toyen (1902–1980) adopted a name that resisted conventional classification.
Born Marie Čermínová, Toyen assumed the pseudonym in early adulthood.
Its precise origin remains uncertain.
The National Galleries of Scotland identify two possible explanations: the French citoyen, meaning citizen, or the Czech expression to je on, meaning it is he.
Neither interpretation has been conclusively established.
What is clear is that the chosen name departed from conventional gendered naming practices and accompanied an artistic identity that challenged social expectations.
Toyen became a major figure in the Czech avant-garde and Surrealist movement, developing a visual language concerned with dreams, desire, anxiety and the instability of ordinary reality.
Unlike a designation inherited through family, geography or occupation, Toyen’s name offered a degree of independence from classifications imposed at birth.
The contrast with Lempicka is instructive.
One artist carefully cultivated a recognizable persona. The other adopted a name whose ambiguity resisted conventional definitions.
Both demonstrate that naming can become an act of artistic self-determination.
7. When art history names the artist: anonymity, attribution and the author-function
Not every artistic name is chosen during an artist’s lifetime.
Some are created by historians centuries later.
The painter known today as the Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece was active in Cologne around the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
His original name remains unknown.
The National Gallery in London explains that his conventional designation derives from an altarpiece formerly associated with the church of St Columba in Cologne, now preserved in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
Through stylistic analysis and the study of related works, scholars have identified a recognizable artistic personality without recovering the historical individual’s name.
The result is a remarkable reversal.
Usually, we imagine that an artist’s name identifies the creator of a work.
Here, the work identifies the artist.
This case is particularly meaningful to me because of its connection with Cologne, the region in which I live and work.
It also brings us to a broader philosophical question about authorship.
In his influential 1969 lecture What Is an Author?, Michel Foucault questioned the assumption that an author’s name functions merely as an ordinary proper name.
His concept of the author-function describes how authorship operates within cultural systems that classify, interpret and organize bodies of work.
Although Foucault’s argument principally concerns discourse and literature, it offers a productive perspective on visual art.
A name such as Rembrandt connects works to a recognized artistic identity. It organizes catalogues, museum collections, attribution studies and scholarly interpretation.
The relationship becomes particularly apparent when an attribution changes.
A painting may remain materially identical while its art-historical significance changes considerably depending on whether it is attributed to a master, an assistant, a follower or an entirely different artist.
The history of the two Canalettos illustrates precisely this problem.
An artist’s name therefore has institutional consequences, affecting the classification, interpretation, provenance and sometimes market value of works.
But a name’s significance should not be reduced to recognition or commercial value.
It develops through a complex relationship between the artist, the work and successive generations of interpretation.
This distinction is central to my own understanding of artistic practice:
Identity is what something is.
Image is how something becomes visible.
Reputation is how that image exists in the consciousness of others.
The distinction becomes particularly important in portraiture, where an individual’s identity and their desired public image do not always coincide. I explore this tension further in The Portrait Is Not a Personal Brand.
These three dimensions are interdependent, but they are not interchangeable. An artist may influence their public image. Their underlying identity is more complex. And reputation ultimately develops beyond the complete control of the individual to whom it belongs.
8. Atlanta Weiss: finding a name rather than inventing an identity
I began exploring the name Atlanta Weiss in 2008.
My initial motivations were practical. My existing name was long and difficult to spell, pronounce and remember in international environments. As someone moving between different languages and cultural contexts, I wanted an artistic name that would be clear, memorable and internationally accessible. Yet practicality alone was not enough.
A name can be convenient without feeling authentic. I spent considerable time considering different possibilities, listening to how they sounded and, in a sense, trying them on.
I wanted a name that could accommodate not only the artist I was, but the artistic identity I was gradually developing.
The eventual choice was Atlanta Weiss.
Over time, the name acquired meanings that extended far beyond its original practical purpose.
Atlanta — Between Earth and Sky
The first part of my name evokes several symbolic associations: Atlas, Atlantis and the architectural figures known as Atlantes.
In classical architecture, Atlantes are sculpted male figures serving as structural supports, appearing to carry the weight of an architectural element above them.
Atlas, in Greek mythology, bears the heavens. These associations are personal and symbolic rather than claims of direct linguistic derivation. Yet the image of a figure connecting earth and sky has particular significance for me.
My father, himself an artist, founded his own art school in 1997.
His understanding of the artist’s role is captured in a thought he formulated:
“Zwischen Erde und Himmel,
zwischen Phantasie und Realität
bauen wir an unserem Glück
mit den Gesetzen von Einheit und Harmonie.”
Or, in English:
“Between earth and sky, between imagination and reality, we build our happiness according to the principles of unity and harmony.”
His words describe an understanding of art that goes beyond the production of images.
The artist occupies a space between imagination and material existence. What is first imagined, perceived or conceived inwardly may eventually acquire physical form through artistic practice.
The invisible becomes visible. The imagined becomes tangible.
My father’s philosophy speaks of bringing imagination and reality into harmony.
My own artistic interests have increasingly concerned the relationship between inner identity and outward representation.
Looking back, I recognize a coherent intellectual thread connecting these perspectives.
For me, Atlanta suggests mythology, independence, height, mystery and the relationship between earth and sky.
It represents the artist as someone who moves between different forms of reality.
Weiss — The Infinite Possibility of an Empty Canvas
The second part of my name carries a different set of associations.
In German, weiß denotes the colour white – my favourite colour. It is also the form of the verb wissen in expressions such as ich weiß — I know.
In English, wise suggests wisdom, knowledge and judgment.
This resemblance creates a meaningful association across languages.
For me, a blank white canvas is not simply empty. It represents the extraordinary condition in which every artistic possibility remains open.
Before the first line is drawn or the first colour is applied, nothing has yet been determined.
The image does not exist materially. Yet countless potential images remain possible.
Its apparent emptiness is inseparable from its creative potential.
It is a space in which imagination has not yet become reality.
White, light, knowledge and possibility became part of a personal interpretation that developed around the name.
A name as an artistic philosophy
When considered together, both elements express something greater than a practical professional designation.
ATLANTA
Between Earth and Sky.
WEISS
The Infinite Possibility of an Empty Canvas.
Imagination becoming reality.
This interpretation did not emerge fully formed in 2008. It developed gradually through personal experience, artistic practice and reflection.
I did not need to understand every future implication of the name when I first chose it. Nor did I imagine that selecting a particular name would determine the course of my artistic career.
Rather, the name provided a space in which that career could develop. Looking back, I would describe the experience in these words:
“Atlanta Weiss was not a name I invented to become someone else. It was a name through which I began to recognise who I wanted to be.”
This relationship also informs my photographic series Archetype Archives, which explores the figures and roles through which we recognize and represent ourselves.
9. Who ultimately gets to name an artist?
The history of artistic naming resists a single answer.
Tintoretto inherited an occupational nickname. El Greco was identified through his origins. Picasso and Rembrandt shaped their professional signatures. Hokusai assumed different names throughout his career. Tamara de Lempicka cultivated a distinctive public persona, while Toyen chose a name that resisted conventional classification.
The Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece received his designation from art historians centuries after his lifetime.
And I chose Atlanta Weiss through a process of developing my own artistic identity.
These decisions and circumstances belong to different periods and cultures. Yet together, they reveal that an artistic name is never entirely private.
It exists between the individual and society, between intention and interpretation.
An artist can select a name, but cannot completely determine what that name will eventually mean.
Its significance emerges through artistic practice, historical reception and cultural memory.
Perhaps this is why the naming of artists remains such a revealing subject.
It concerns more than a signature or pseudonym.
It concerns the relationship between who we believe ourselves to be, how we choose to appear, and how we are eventually remembered.
And it returns us to the question with which we began:
Who are we beneath the identities we have acquired?
Our names may not provide the answer.
But the ways in which we choose them, inhabit them and transform them can reveal something profound about the search.
A name identifies the artist. The work gives that name meaning. And history decides what remains.
Selected references and further reading
- National Gallery of Art, Washington. Jacopo Tintoretto. Biographical research on the origin of his professional name.
- National Gallery, London. Canaletto and Bernardo Bellotto. Biographies and research on the two artists’ shared designation.
- National Gallery, London. Bernardo Bellotto, Venice: The Grand Canal facing Santa Croce. Collection research documenting the painting’s attribution history.
- National Gallery, London. El Greco. Artist biography.
- Museu Picasso, Barcelona. María Picasso López, the Mother of a Genius. The importance of Picasso’s maternal surname.
- National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rembrandt van Rijn. Artist biography and collection resources.
- British Museum. Katsushika Hokusai. Biographical record of Hokusai’s numerous artistic names.
- Tamara de Lempicka Estate. Official Biography and Chronology. Documentation of her early signatures and artistic career.
- National Galleries of Scotland. Toyen. Artist biography and discussion of the pseudonym’s uncertain origins.
- National Gallery, London. Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece. Documentation of the anonymous artist active in Cologne.
- Michel Foucault. Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur? (1969). English translation in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, edited by Donald F. Bouchard, Cornell University Press, 1977.
- Douglas Harper. Online Etymology Dictionary: Wise and Wisdom. Historical etymology of the English words.
What makes an artist’s name their own? From Tintoretto and Canaletto to Picasso, Hokusai and Toyen, Atlanta Weiss explores the history of artistic names and pseudonyms—and the profound relationship between identity, image and reputation. A personal and art-historical reflection on who we are, how we choose to be seen and what history remembers.
