exhibition
30 April 2015 > 20 September 2015
Good Luck. Lara Favaretto
photogallery
(Winschoten, The Netherlands, 1942)
At the age of two his father was killed by the Nazis for hosting Jewish refugees.
He briefl y attended the Rietveld Academy, later hitchhiking his way to Morocco at the age of nineteen. From here he boarded a yacht for the United States in 1965. When the yacht sank in California Ader decided to remain in Los Angeles, where he enrolled at the Otis Art Institute.
The 1970s were very productive for his artistic work: this is the period of his fi lm on the action of “falling”. In 1975 decided to cross the Atlantic on a small sailboat, for a research project entitled In Search of the Miraculous. The empty boat was discovered six months later off the coast of Ireland.
(Horse Cave Creek, Ohio, USA, 1842)
After enrolling in the Army he fought in the American Civil War, an experience that would infl uence his writing. After the war, Bierce moved to San Francisco where he began his journalistic career.
He wrote numerous stories and in 1911 published his famous The Devil’s Dictionary, a satirical dictionary in which he cynically criticised contemporary American society using defi nitions and aphorisms.
His private life was marked by the tragic death of two of his three sons. In 1913 Bierce left for South America, where he mysteriously disappeared.
(Escondido, California, USA, 1948)
In 1969 he began writing for various publications, including Creem, New Musical Express, The Village Voice and Rolling Stone, defi ning a particular style, similar to Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism.
Famous for a number of interviews, he was a staunch supporter of noise, punk and Lou Reed. As a musician he participated in the 1980 album Jook Savages on the Brazos with the Delinquents.
On 30 April 1982 he was found dead from a drug overdose in his apartment in New York, where he had moved in 1976.
(London, United Kingdom, 1832)
At the age of seven Corbett emigrated to New York with his family, where he worked as a hatter. Following his wife’s death, he moved to Boston where he converted to Christianity, grew his hair in imitation of Jesus and actually castrated himself with a pair of scissors. At the beginning of the Civil War he enrolled with a group of soldiers tasked with capturing Booth the day after the President’s assassination however, contrary to orders, Corbett killed him.
After the war, he was involved in an attack against “the heretics”.
He was arrested and sent to the Topeka Psychiatric Hospital, from which he escaped in 1888.
(Fabian Avenarius Lloyd, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1887)
A self-declared “citizen of 20 countries”, during the First World War he travelled between Europe and America using false papers. While passing through the Canary Islands he organised a boxing match with then world champion Jack Johnson to finance his trip to the United States. A mythical figure for the Dadaists and Surrealists, Cravan disappeared at sea during a boat trip from Mexico to Argentina in 1918.
(Ghaziabad, India, 1932)
To deal with business problems, and despite not being a seasoned sailor, he decided to participate in the Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race, for which the Sunday Times offered a cash prize. A number of the technical innovations made to his yacht gained him sponsors but, soon after beginning the race (October 1968) he ran into serious difficulties. He secretly abandoned the race, while continuing to communicate false positions to the jury, pretending to continue navigating.
On 10 July his boat was discovered, intact though abandoned.
(Bordeaux, France, 1860)
One day he simply left his job, his family, his everyday life, driven by an uncontrollable urge to wander. The first medically certified case of dromomania, Dadas became famous for his extraordinary trips, arriving as far as Algeria, Moscow and Constantinople by various means; trips made in a state of unconsciousness and recalled only under hypnosis.
(Atchison, Kansas, USA, 1897)
The first woman to cross the Atlantic on a solo flight in 1932. In 1936 she planned to fly around the world, travelling along the treacherous equatorial route. After an attempt that failed due to technical problems, the Electra twin engine monoplane flown by Earhart and Fred Noonan once again took to the skies. On 2 July 1397 radio communications with the Electra were lost over the Pacific near Howland Island.
(Torquay, United Kingdom, 1867)
In 1886 he was sent on an expedition with the Royal Artillery to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he discovered a set of inscriptions on a rock that convinced him of the existence of a great ancient city hidden in the forests
of Brazil, which he called “Z”. He left with his son Jack in search of this lost city and was last heard of in a letter to his wife from Brazil dated 1925.
(Chicago, USA, 1943)
He successfully defeated the Russian Boris Spassky in 1972 in a game considered the symbol of the battle between the two superpowers during the Cold War. His career was characterised by successes and periods of absence, such as his famous refusal to defend his world title in 1975. A complex personality, Fischer was arrested more than once. In 1992 he lost his American citizenship for violating the UN embargo by travelling to the former Yugoslavia for a chess match. He died in 2008 in Reykjavik.
(Providence, Rhode Island, USA, 1890)
Among the leading authors of horror stories and one of the precursors to the genre of science fiction. Following the precocious death of his father, Lovecraft was entrusted to the care of his mother, two aunts and his grandfather. Forced to abandon his studies for economic and health reasons, he lived for many years in isolation, dedicating himself to writing. After a short-lived marriage and a period in New York, Lovecraft returned to Providence, where he led a destitute life, dying of intestinal cancer in 1937.
(Catania, Italy, 1906)
He was responsible for important discoveries in nuclear physics, quantum mechanics and the theory of neutrino masses. After moving to Rome with his family in 1912, he enrolled at the faculty of engineering, though he soon switched to physics, graduating with Enrico Fermi. For research he travelled initially to Germany, where he met Heisenberg, and later to Copenhagen. Upon his return he became very reserved, to the point of refusing any correspondence and a number of commissions. In 1937 he accepted a position as professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Naples. Majorana disappeared the following year during a sea voyage from Palermo to Naples.
(Basel, Switzerland, 1954)
After a number of years living in the Alps, where he fell in love with local traditions of craft, medicine and speleology, Manser decided to leave for Borneo with the intent of living a money-free life. From 1984 to 1990 he lived in the Malaysian jungle, cataloguing flora and fauna and learning the language and culture of the Penan people of Borneo. Manser began a series of campaigns to raise awareness about the preservation of the rain forest and its peoples, making an enemy of the Malaysian government.
On 25 May 2000 all trace of Manser was lost after he crossed the Malaysian border, against orders.
(Glen Cove, New York, USA, 1937)
After beginning his studies at the Faculty of Physics and Engineering, in 1957 he left school to enrol in the Navy. After being discharged he enrolled in the Faculty of Letters. He debuted in 1959 with the publication of two stories and in 1960 he moved to Seattle to work for Boeing Aircraft, where he was assumed as a technical writer. At the same time, he completed his first novel, V, which was published in 1963 and immediately achieved cult status. He was highly adverse to appearing in public, no details are available about his private life and only a few rare photographs exist, almost all from his youth.
(Los Angeles, California, USA, 1914)
During his early years, his family moved often around the United States, from Boston to Brooklyn, from New Jersey to California, where they settled. He completed his first solo journey at the age of sixteen, returning only to earn his diploma and depart once again. His art is strictly linked to the experiences of his travels, and the exploration of nature. He began writing verse as a child, recording his thoughts in a diary, as well as making etchings, modelling clay and drawing. He travelled by horse or pack mule, crossing the natural parks and deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. In 1934 he disappeared in the Utah desert.
(New York, USA, 1919 – Cornish, United Kingdom, 2010)
The son of Marie, of Irish origins, and Sol, an American Jew of Lithuanian origins, he began writing at a very young age and by 1940 he was publishing stories in the magazines Story and The New Yorker. He fought in the Second World War, which led to a meeting with Hemingway in Paris. In 1951 he published his famous The Catcher in the Rye, which immediately met with vast success. Despite many recognitions, Salinger withdrew from public life, avoiding any public appearances, refusing interviews and moving to Cornish, New Hampshire. He stopped publishing altogether in 1965. When Ian Hamilton began writing his biography, Salinger filed a law suit to block its publication.
(Smiljan, Croatia, 1856)
After studying in Graz and Prague, in 1884 he emigrated to the United States. He was responsible for many contributions in the field of electromagnetism and alternating current, including the invention of the radio, contested with Marconi, and radar. Initially supported by J. Pierpont Morgan, Tesla later fell out of favour. He died in New York in 1943 while planning a direct energy super weapon known as teleforce; his documents were sequestered by the FBI.
(Pilisvorosyar, Hungary, 1938)
Tóth had lived in Sydney since 1965, where he was forced to work in a factory due to the fact that his Hungarian geology diploma was not recognised in Australia. After 1967 he began growing his beard and hair to resemble Jesus. He travelled to Rome where he attempted to meet with Pope Paul VI and seek recognition as the living incarnation of Christ. He was stopped, though a few months later he visited St. Peter’s Basilica, striking the Pietà fifteen times with a hammer. He was held in a psychiatric hospital until 1975 and then transferred directly back to Australia.
Gallery 4
The experience awaiting visitors to Good Luck
is the result of a perceptive intertwining of space,
matter, time, and events experienced or evoked,
in a mental and sensorial journey
that is destined to make its mark.
Anna Mattirolo
With Lara Favaretto’s Good Luck, MAXXI is continuing with its mission to promote the excellence of Italian artistic creativity.
Ten years have gone by since, through the Young Italian Art Prize, the first work by Lara Favaretto entered the Museum’s permanent collection, and now MAXXI is devoting an entire gallery to her latest creations, at a time when her work has become internationally acknowledged as some of the most significant of her generation.
Good Luck presents eighteen of the twenty cenotaphs created by Lara Favaretto since 2010, bringing them together for the first time.
A cenotaph is an empty tomB a funerary monument of highly symbolic value. They have been erected since antiquity to preserve the memory of the deceased, without containing their mortal remains, which may be lost or in some other place. Each one of Favaretto’s cenotaphs is dedicated to a person who has disappeared.
Erected in their memory, the cenotaphs we see in Good Luck are in the form of sculptural volumes of different shapes and sizes, consisting of a combination of surfaces in wood, brass and earth.
Hidden within these volumes, or placed next to them, buried or in contact with the earth, there are metal boxes that contain a number of objects that belonged, or are dedicated, to the disappeared.
Brought together in Rome for the Good Luck exhibition, the cenotaphs are made to be dispersed and preserved separately. Their final locations will draw a new, ideal, utopian map of places destined to the memory of the deceased.
The eighteen cenotaphs in Good Luck are dedicated to
Jean-Albert Dadas, Percy Fawcett, Amelia Mary Earhart, Arthur Cravan, Robert James “Bobby” Fischer, Donald Crowhurst, Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Nikola Tesla, Thomas P. “Boston” Corbett, Ettore Majorana, Leslie Conway “Lester” Bangs, J.D. Salinger, Bruno Manser, Everett Ruess, Bas Jan Ader, László Tóth, Thomas Ruggles Pynchon.
The exhibition has been made possible thanks to the contribution of Galleria Franco Noero
Bas Jan Ader
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
Leslie Conway “Lester” Bangs
Thomas P. “Boston” Corbett
Arthur Cravan
Donald Crowhurst
Jean-Albert Dadas
Amelia Mary Earhart
Percy Fawcett
Robert James “Bobby” Fischer
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Ettore Majorana
Bruno Manser
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr
Everett Ruess
Jerome David Salinger
Nikola Tesla
Làszló Tóth