Picasso's 'Annabel' – the rights and wrongs of renaming paintings

Richard Caring – owner of Annabel’s – has decided to retitle the artist’s Girl with a Red Beret and Pompom after his Mayfair club. It’s an arrogant move, but we shouldn’t be religious about the names we pin on art

Is it possible that Richard Caring, owner of Annabel’s in Mayfair, understands art history better than scholars who have lambasted him for renaming his Picasso?

Caring has called the scintillating 1937 masterpiece he bought for £20-£30m under the title Girl with a Red Beret and Pompom by a new ludicrously self-serving title: Annabel. Fake art history! – cry the experts. But hang on. Caring is something of a nominalist philosopher, exposing the often arbitrary nature of the names we give art.