Is a Single-Color Painting Art?

"Is a canvas painted with only magnolia paint, about the work or the title? It seems to me that most of the abstract works of a single colored canvas depend on their title to portray any art that may be in the 'painting'. If the 'work' had no title or was called Dulux Matt Emulsion Painted on a Canvas with a Paintbrush would it still have the same appeal to lovers of abstracts?

"If an artist produces a canvas with only two or three colours having peaked thick blue oils, below a 'sandy' textured yellow I could see seaside, oasis, landfall, or whatever. That is art. But, again I ask you, is a plain textured, single colored 'painting' art"? -- Damian P Faloona, in response to How to Understand Abstract Art

In a word: yes. Whether it's enjoyable or forgettable, good or bad, art, that's really the issue for me. And with single-color paintings it's crucial to stand in front of at least some of them to see for yourself, not judge the as a job-lot from photos which can't reproduce the subtleties of the paint (if it exists, of course). Take Ad Reinhardt's black paintings, for instance, which has nine different squares of black in it, but typically in a photo appears to be simple one black.

Wanting to see something in an abstract that makes you think of something from the real world, such as a seaside, means you're looking at abstract art through the lens of realism. You're not assessing an abstract in terms of abstract art. Pattern and color, shape and texture, interaction of the elements, the overall arrangement or composition.

Titles do guide our interpretation, whether we look at it before or after seeing the painting for the first time, but that's not unique to abstracts.