On July 9, 1975, artist Bas Jan Ader set sail from Chatham, Massachusetts, for Palmouth, England, on the second leg of a three-part piece titled In Search of the Miraculous. His damaged boat was found south of the western tip of Ireland nearly a year later. He was never seen again. Since his untimely death, Ader has become a legend in the art world as a figure literally willing to die for his art. Considering the artist’s legacy and oeuvre beyond the mysterious circumstances of his peculiar end, Alexander Dumbadze resituates Ader’s art and life within the Los Angeles conceptual art scene of the early 1970s. Blending biography, theoretical reflection, and archival research to draw a detailed picture of the world in which Ader’s work was rooted, Bas Jan Ader is a thoughtful reflection on the necessity of the creative act and its inescapable relation to death.
