Making Trouble: Strange Wooden Objects and the Early Modern Pursuit of Difficulty

Abstract

This essay begins with a puzzle, a helical torus comprising seventy-six interlinked pieces and originally in the collection of Ferdinand II, Archduke of Tirol. Items of this sort emphasize construction praxis. Indeed, the complete lack of illusionistic content allows for little else in the way of analysis. Nevertheless, the maker of this particular object not only avoided representational claims but also obscured the key piece, the means for completing the torus. Consequently, the object offers an almost pure test of visual processing via confusion. This is all the more noteworthy, given the place of that torus within Ferdinand II’s Kunstkammer, a space dedicated to the cultivation of understanding. The result is a paradoxical object, simultaneously inviting and confounding attempts at even the most basic sorts of interpretation. My goal in this essay is to map the contours of that paradox and the adversarial tone that characterized it.

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