Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium
18-20 August 2016
Co-opetition: Testing the Bounds of Cooperation and Competition
Session Sponsored by the Italian Art Society
John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern’s landmark 1944 publication,
Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, introduced the world to the
economic field of Game Theory and proposed the principle of
co-opetition. Originally suggested as a method of interaction between
businesses, the theory holds that when two competitive entities share
congruent interests, working together to develop those shared
characteristics will lead to a greater outcome than isolated efforts.
This concept has been applied in earlier research to the working
relationship between early sixteenth-century figures Raphael and
Baldassarre Peruzzi in the negotiations of artistic and architectural
commissions at the Roman Villa Chigi (known today as the Villa
Farnesina). Though the two were inherent competitors, the visual record
at the Villa Farnesina suggests that competition was tempered with
collaboration to yield a striking series of visual narratives that
today are recognized as a watershed moment in Roman artistic and
architectural history.
This session aims to advance this initial exploration by inviting paper
topics that work to apply this theory of co-opetition to the larger
field of early sixteenth-century Italian artistic and architectural
production as a nuanced engagement between the parameters of
competition and cooperation, examining instances where normally
competitive forces chose to work in tandem to achieve an ultimate
artistic goal. Papers could trace this theme within a singular work
that exhibits these tensions to a larger negotiation, for example, one
that occurs between workshop participants or large-scale commissions.
The goal of this session is to better elucidate this term in its
applications to art and architecture and to assess more globally its
validity in such applications to the working relationships of
sixteenth-century figures.
Prospective participants should send a brief abstract (no more than 300
words) and a brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum in outline rather
than narrative form) to [log in to unmask] by 1 February, 2016.
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