HH at the Tate Britain

A friend recommended the Howard Hodgkin exhibition at the Tate. I thought it would be a small exhibition but in fact it is extremely large. The colours in some of the paintings are delicious. It is very well displayed on colour washed walls, and in some parts of the gallery, only one painting is displayed on a whole vast space. It is, unlike the Oehlen exhibition, arranged chronologically.
Once again there is a filmed interview, though this time you cannot see the interviwer and some of the words are very indistinct, so luckily there is a typescript.
Howerd Hodgkin said he did not want his paintings to be described as beautiful, because he felt he could described no great paintings as "beautiful". He wants his paintings to be described as "good". Well I agree, they are.
But once again, the shapes of the abstracts are not easy for me to appreciate. Almost all of the mid and later ones include dots and splodges, some marks made with a sponge or cork, perhaps. As you probably know, the frames are part of the image and most of the works are paintings on wood, which I think he prefers because he works on them over several years. This is something that a lot of artists do not like to do. I wonder why he has chosen this course? One I belive took him 9 years to complete.
This is only possible if you are not pressed to sell, and have plenty of studio space, of course.
The fact they are all titled gave me cause for thought, because the titles are not as far as I can tell, more than the starting point, or inspiration, for the work. For instance Bombay Sunset. Far removed from Bombay or sunsets. But you have to have a handle, perhaps. If you just number everything, or use the alphabet, this removes your work very far from what is important or noteworthy in most people's lives. We have all seen sunsets. I made the experiment of walking round the second time and not reading the titles. This was very difficult to do. My eye was attracted time and time again to the part of the wall to the left of the painting. Do we really need to relate images to words?
Which comes first, the title or the painting? Even photographs in exhibitions and newspapers all have titles. We can order objects better if we name them, of course.