In this article, we put new materialist concepts to work in an experiment in thinking-with-matter. We write our way into an encounter with two artworks by Australian French Impressionist John Russell, hanging in an exhibition space at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In being-with and becoming-with the pictures, we go off the beaten track, not concerning ourselves with aesthetics, critique, meaning-making, or sociocultural conventions. We begin with W. J. T. Mitchell’s question what do pictures want? We extend his question, drawing on new materialist philosophers, to explore what is made possible when the matter of paint-on-canvas is encountered, not as inert, but as lively, affective, and intra-active. Our experiment moves to what happens in between ourselves as human subjects and the more-than-human matter of these works of art.
New South Wales Ministry of the Arts