The Infallibility of the Improbable: Painting, Walking, Filming

Abstract

The article starts from the assumption that a certain role of chance, perhaps controlled, or guided, led towards a desired outcome, is always present in our existence as in artistic practices, hidden under very different names and masks. This paradox often nests in what we call the outcome of a work of art: the completeness of the work is, after all, the result of a series of contingencies, which gain their own special necessity after the fact. The article shows how this dynamic concerns painting and the artistic practice of walking, typical of some avant-gardes. Finally, the paper focuses on the example of Ugo Nespolo’s film Buongiorno, Michelangelo, which recounts a very particular walk of a few young artists through the streets of Turin in the 1960s.