Bas Jan Ader

Author: Alexander Dumbadze
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022603867X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 197

Book Description
On July 9, 1975, Dutch-born artist Bas Jan Ader set sail from Chatham, Massachusetts, on a thirteen-foot sailboat. He was bound for Falmouth, England, on the second leg of a three-part piece titled In Search of the Miraculous. The damaged boat was found south of the western tip of Ireland nearly a year later. Ader was never seen again. Since his untimely death, Ader has achieved mythic status in the art world as a figure literally willing to die for his art. Considering the artist’s legacy and concise oeuvre beyond the romantic and tragic associations that accompany his peculiar end, Alexander Dumbadze resituates Ader’s art and life within the conceptual art world of Los Angeles in the early 1970s and offers a nuanced argument about artistic subjectivity that explains Ader’s tremendous relevance to contemporary art. Bas Jan Ader blends biography, theoretical reflection, and archival research to draw a detailed picture of the world in which Ader’s work was rooted: a vibrant international art scene populated with peers such as Ger van Elk, William Leavitt, and Allen Ruppersberg. Dumbadze looks closely at Ader’s engagement with questions of free will and his ultimate success in creating art untainted by mediation. The first in-depth study of this enigmatic conceptual artist, Bas Jan Ader is a thoughtful reflection on the necessity of the creative act and its inescapable relation to death.

Bas Jan Ader

Author: Jan Verwoert
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1846381282
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 70

Book Description
An illustrated investigation into the critical motives behind the last, unfinished work that has defined the romantic legacy of conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader. In 1975 Bas Jan Ader disappeared at sea while trying to sail from the East Coast of the United States to Europe as part of a project titled In Search of the Miraculous. Ader's considerable influence on later conceptual artists stems from the way in which he used the cool analytic and antisubjective aesthetics of conceptual art to explore experiences that would seem definitively subjective—the emotional intensity of tragedy and the romantic quest for the sublime. In Search of the Miraculous was conceived as a three-part project: a lonely nighttime walk from the hills of Los Angeles down to the sea, documented in photographs; the Atlantic crossing; a night walk through Amsterdam, mirroring the LA photographs.The circumstances of his disappearance have led many interpreters to identify Ader (as a person) with the role of the tragic romantic hero. The cult status of the artist as a hero whose work is authenticated through his death, however, has obscured the fact that Ader's art was a critical investigation of precisely those romantic motives his persona has now come to be identified with. This book unpicks these ties in Ader's work in order to highlight the specific and unique way in which Ader explores the existential and emotional with an artistic approach that is as conceptual and analytic as it is poetic and personal. Afterall Books are distributed by The MIT Press.

In Search of the Miraculous

Author: Marion van Wijk
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789086900114
Category : 20ste eeuw
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
When Bas Jan Ader's boat, "Ocean Wave," was found unmanned and partially submerged 150 miles off the coast of Ireland by a Spanish fishing vessel in 1976, it was taken to La Coruña for investigation. Days later, the boat was stolen and the cult of Ader, whose body was never recovered, and who was thought by many to have staged this incident, was truly cemented. In this volume, Marion van Wijk and Koos Dalstra, who spent 10 years investigating this unsolved mystery, reproduce the entire police report in facsimile. They also include many pages of eerie written documentation and transcriptions of interviews they conducted during their decade of intensive sleuthing: "The report has 74 pages. It begins on April 27, 1976 and ends on February 1, 1977. It relates the history of the "Ocean Wave" from the moment Don Alferan speaks about his discovery to the authorities until nine months later, when the case is closed. The reason: the authorities cannot find the stolen boat that disappeared from San Diego harbor in Coruña between May 18 and June 7, 1976."

Bas Jan Ader

Author: Marion van Wijk
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781927354100
Category : Artists
Languages : es
Pages : 0

Book Description
On July 9, 1975, Bas Jan Ader departed for what he called "a very long sailing trip"--a several month journey from Stage Harbor, Massachusetts, to the southern coast of England. The crossing was undertaken as part of In Search of the Miraculous, an artwork scheduled to be exhibited at the Groninger Museum in The Netherlands. On April 18, 1976, Ader's boat the Ocean Wave was found unmanned and partially submerged 150 miles off the coast of Ireland by the crew of the Eduardo Pondal, a Spanish fishing trawler. The Dutch artist's boat was taken to La Coruña for investigation. Days later, the boat was stolen. Ader's body was never recovered. Discovery File 143/76 documents the mysterious fate of the 13 ft micro yacht at the center of artist Bas Jan Ader's ill-fated attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean. For the book, artists Marion van Wijk and Koos Dalstra compile years of research into the still unsolved mystery of Bas Jan Ader's disappearance. The Spanish police report documenting the boat's theft is reproduced in facsimile alongside a translation into English. The volume also compiles additional documentation produced during the editors' investigations including transcriptions of interviews with Ader's widow Mary Sue Anderson, curator Charles Esche, and family members of the owner of the Eduardo Pondal.--Publisher's website.

Bas Jan Ader

Author: Bas Jan Ader
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Book Description
Thirty years after Bas Jan Ader failed to return from a solo crossing of the Atlantic, the interest in his work continues to grow. In less than ten years he created some thirty-five works of art in which falling, physical and emotional vulnerability and mortality are the central themes. Published to coincide with a retrospective exhibition, this thoroughly illustrated catalogue provides a much needed overview of these and other aspects of Ader's work. Also includes contributions by Tacita Dean, J rg Heiser and Erik Beenker, amongst others.

In & Out of Amsterdam

Author: Christophe Cherix
Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art
ISBN: 9780870707537
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Book Description
During the 1960s & 1970s, Amsterdam was a nexus of intense art activities, drawing artists from all over the world. 'In & Out Of Amsterdam' presents more than 120 works - including works on paper, installations, photographs & films - by artists who were part of this remarkable creative culture.

Sad, Depressed, People

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781927354018
Category : Depression, Mental
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
David Horvitz's Sad, Depressed, People looks at a set of images circulating within stock photography collections. These photographs, in which actors are photographed holding their heads in their hands, ostensibly depressed, are here shown to contain a bizarre tension between their status as stock images and their supposedly emotional content.

You and Me Or the Art of Give and Take

Author: Allen Ruppersberg
Publisher: Jrp Ringier
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
Edited by Constance Lewallen. Text by Margaret Sundell, Greil Marcus, Tim Griffin, John Slyce.

Fall

Author: Bas Jan Ader
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Conceptual art
Languages : en
Pages : 62

Book Description

Art-Rite

Author: Walter Robinson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780991558575
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This facsimile edition collects all 19 issues of 'Art-Rite' magazine, edited by art critics Walter Robinson and Edit DeAk from 1973 to 1978. Robinson, DeAk and a third editor, Joshua Cohn, met as art history students at Columbia University, and were inspired to found the magazine by their art criticism teacher, Brian O'Doherty. 'Art-Rite', cheaply produced on newsprint, served as an important alternative to the established art magazines of the period. 'Art-Rite' ran for only five years, and published only 19 issues. But in that time the magazine featured contributions from hundreds of artists, a list that now reads like a who's-who of 1970s art: Yvonne Rainer, Gordon Matta-Clark, Alan Vega (Suicide), William Wegman, Nancy Holt, Jack Smith, Dorothea Rockburne, Robert Morris, Adrian Piper, Laurie Anderson, Carolee Schneemann and Carl Andre; critics such as Lucy Lippard contributed writing. Through its single-artist issues and its thematic issues on performance, video and artists' books, 'Art-Rite' championed the new art of its era.