This conference, organized by Ariella Minden, Alessandro Nova, and Luca Palozzi, brings failure into focus as a crucial component of artistic production. The chronological span, 1150 to 1750, encompasses the emergence of new methods of scientific and artistic inquiry rooted in empirical observation and sustained experimentation. Artists harnessed different materials, forged their own tools, and, in their quest for new and expressive means, bridged and breached boundaries between media and techniques. Very often, they failed. Although failure is neglected, and often stigmatised in art history as the antagonist to success, a reappraisal of its generative force might reveal a myriad interpretative avenues. A history of art that is not exclusively result oriented takes the experiments that went wrong as primary historical evidence for the vast array of activities that constitute art making.

For information and registration please see the conference website:
https://www.khi.fi.it/en/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/2020/11/Failure_Understanding_Art_as_Process.php

PROGRAM

- Thursday, 5 November -

14:00
Ariella Minden, Alessandro Nova, Luca Palozzi
Welcome and Introduction

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Failure (and Success)
Chair: Alessandro Nova

14:30
Sefy Hendler (Tel Aviv University)
Fallire, errore, biasmo: towards a typology of early modern artistic failures

15:10
Janis Bell (Independent Scholar)
Corrected mistakes: Printing Leonardo in Paris

15:50
Gerd Blum (Kunstakademie Münster)
Upside Down: The Fragment of a Failed Monument Presented as a Masterpiece of Success – Michelangelo’s Moses and His Inverted Tablets in Image and Text, 1513–1568

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Failing and Repairing
Chair: Luca Palozzi

16:50
Sarah M. Guérin (University of Pennsylvania)
Reaching for the stars: Failed Enamels, c. 1300

17:30
Giampaolo Ermini (Independent Scholar)
«Attonito, et totalmente abandonato in se medesimo». Fallimenti tra i fonditori di campane (Italia, secoli XIII-XVI)

18:10
Rachel E. Boyd (Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University)
Waste not, want not: Repairing Renaissance glazed terracotta

18:40
Discussion

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- Friday, 6 November -

Drawing, Failing, and Learning
Chair: Ariella Minden

11:30
Nino Nanobashvili (Bayrische Akademie der Wissenschaften)
The Rise and Fall of Anatomy: Alessandro Allori’s Unfinished Drawing Manual and his Iterative Struggles with It

12:10
Henrike Scholten (Utrecht University)
Hendrick van Beaumont: Learning to draw outside the studio

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Planning and Failing
Chair: Dario Donetti

14:00
Cara Rachele (ETH Zurich)
Failure and Masterpiece: Bramante’s Cracks at Saint Peter’s Basilica

14:40
Caroline Murphy (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Diagnosing Disorder: Girolamo di Pace da Prato’s “Memoriale” (1558) and Aqueous Expertise in the Tuscan Landscape

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Trial and Error
Chair: Marco Mascolo

15:40
Stephanie S. Dickey (Queen’s University)
Rembrandt’s Failure as a Printmaker

16:20
Tianna Uchacz (Texas A&M University)
Recipes for Failure: Experimenting, Repairing, and Quitting in Renaissance Toulouse

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Failure: Supports, Surface and Colour
Chair: Katharine Stahlbuhk

17:20
Hanna Baro (Universität Siegen)
Successful Failures? Experimenting with Textile Paint Supports around 1500

18:00
Christopher Nygren (University of Pittsburgh)
Sedimented Failures: Painting on Stone and the Economy of Failure in Early Modern Italy

18:40
Marco Collareta (Università di Pisa)
Fortuna e sfortuna del colore nella scultura invetriata del Rinascimento

19:20
Discussion and Final Remarks