Bas Jan Ader

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Bas Jan Ader (actually Bastiaan Johan Christiaan Ader) (born April 19, 1942 in Winschoten , Netherlands ; † Atlantic Ocean , 1975 ) was a Dutch video and conceptual artist who left a very small but influential oeuvre.

life and work

childhood

Ader grew up in Winschoten, the Netherlands, as one of two sons of the preacher Bastiaan Jan Ader and Johanna Adriana Ader-Apel. His father was just like his mother in the Dutch resistance and was shot by the German occupation forces in 1944 . Ader, just 2 years old, and his brother were then raised by their mother alone.

Artistic training and career

Jan Bas Ader attended various courses at the Institute for Applied Arts in Amsterdam, today's Gerrit Rietveld Academie . He was considered a rebellious student and did not complete his studies there (there is an announcement from Ader that he would only need a sheet of paper for a whole semester, because he wanted to erase every drawing immediately after completion). In 1971 Ader worked in the Westkapelle in Zeeland . The result was a much-noticed film about gravity and traps in front of the village lighthouse in the background , which was also painted by Piet Mondriaan . When he was 19, Ader hitchhiked to Morocco and hitched a ship to the United States. Via various detours, a shipwreck on the coast of California and some adventurous sea voyages, Ader finally came to Los Angeles , where he studied at the Otis Art Institute in the 1960s. There he met Mary Sue Andersen, the director's daughter, and married her in Las Vegas . During the ceremony he walked on crutches, symbolically supported. Ader moved to the Claremont Graduate School in California, where he studied art and philosophy. It was here that more of his short films about falling were made. This was the most fruitful period of his work.

Work development

In his artistic work, Ader was always concerned with dealing with gravity or other physical phenomena. In addition to the actual action, which he always carried out himself, he made use of the momentary transposition into the media of photography and film. His video works (originally 16mm or Super 8 films ) are mostly only a few minutes long sequences in which he showed different types of falling or tipping. One of them with the title "Broken Fall (organic)" shows the artist in the Amsterdam forest. Ader hangs on the branch of a tree until it finally falls into the moat below. Another film shows him on a roof. He sits on a chair and tumbles on the sloping roof until he falls. In a 1971 film, he holds a heavy rock in his hand for as long as he can. As soon as the stone falls, it extinguishes the lamps on the floor and ends the short film. In another short film (3:21 min) with the title "I'm too sad to tell you", Ader cries without ceasing in front of the camera without speaking.

Last voyage

Letter from the USA

In 1975, the 33-year-old artist tried with a very small sailboat (a converted Guppy 13 : 13 feet = 3.96 m; not originally built for long-distance trips) an artistically motivated, performative Atlantic crossing, entitled "In search of the miraculous (songs for north Atlantic) ". About 10 months after his departure, the empty boat was driven off the coast of Ireland. Jan Bas Ader's body was never found. The end of his life is reminiscent of the last voyage of the Dadaist artist Arthur Cravan , who lost his sailboat off the coast of Mexico.

Aftermath

Ader's not very extensive estate is scattered all over the world. There is no central collection of his works, but there are some exhibits in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam . Since the 1990s, however, the strong influence of the Dutchman on contemporary art has been evident and exhibitions of his work have taken place.

Quotes

  • "The sea, the land, the artist has with great sadness known they too will be no more". (The sea, the land, the artist realizes with great sadness that they too will no longer be)
  • In one of his logbooks, Ader described the idea for a postcard: "Greetings from Beautiful Ader Falls" . And more typically the signature: "All is falling" .

Catalog of works (selection)

Because of Ader's very short career, there isn't much work that is documented. Some titles are listed here:

  • Case 1, Los Angeles 1970 (short film)
  • Case 2, Amsterdam 1970 (short film)
  • All in my clothes 1970 (photo series)
  • Farewell to faraway friends 1971 (photo)
  • Untitled (Flower work) 1974 (photo collage)
  • In search of the miraculous (songs for north Atlantic) 1975 (performance)

Exhibitions

  • 2000 Kunstverein Braunschweig: Films, photographs, projections, videos and drawings from the years 1967–1975
  • 2004 Paris: Bas Jan Ader - installations, photographs; Gallery Crousel Chantal
  • 2006 Rotterdam: Retrospective Bas Jan Ader; Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum
  • 2007 Basel: Bas Jan Ader - Fall, Kunsthalle
  • 2013 Hamburg: Better failure , art gallery, gallery of the present
  • 2013 Frankfurt: Bas Jan Aders last ride, Schirn Kunsthalle

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.basjanader.com/ website Bas Jan Ader
  2. ↑ Broken Fall [geometric] - Bas Jan Ader ( Memento from November 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Video - Westkapelle Holland 1971
  3. ↑ http://www.ubu.com/film/ader.html Aders short résumé
  4. ↑ http://www.castor-und-pollux.de/2009/07/bas-jan-ader-und-die-schwerkraft/ Article about Ader in German
  5. ↑ Broken fall (organic), Bas Jan Ader ( Memento from October 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Video
  6. ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyXuiiO11U4 Video Nightfall 1971
  7. ↑ I'm too sad to tell you (1971) - Bas Jan Ader ( Memento from March 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Video
  8. ↑ http://collectie.boijmans.nl/nl?q=bas+jan+ader
  9. ↑ Cf. Maike Aden-Schraenen, In Search of Bas Jan Ader, Berlin 2013. The second part of the book reflects current artistic perspectives on Bas Jan Ader by Jonathan Monk, Elke Krystufek and Haegue Yang
personal data
SURNAME Ader, Bas Jan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ader, Bastiaan Johan Christiaan (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch video and concept artist
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Winschoten
DATE OF DEATH 1975
Place of death Atlantic Ocean