Autonomous Artworks in Conversation

What do paintings have to say to one another? The muted conversation that takes place in a gallery surreptitiously among the artworks is an unseen force. In this paper I examine the interplay of an exhibition curated by an artist that imagined itself as a conversation between artworks. The exhibition Pattern Thinking (2018) takes up a cross-cultural stance by including artworks from a collection of contemporary Indigenous Australian paintings and artworks from three US based artists. Through the coming together of the exhibition a conversation between paintings ensued. Upholding the autonomy of an artwork presents a challenge to common sense notions of the subjective experience of a viewer of artworks as the targeted norm for audiences of exhibitions. Artworks speak in a language of art according to philosopher Theodor Adorno. The paradoxical “vital element” of art includes art’s own objective speaking of truth content. The objectivity of an artwork performs an artwork’s openness rather than the subjective experience of artist or viewer. This paper presents a case study of the Pattern Thinking exhibition as a conversation among artworks with theoretical support from Adorno and subsequent theories of the objectivity of artworks.