The artist Bas Jan Ader has become something of a cult figure in recent decades. His status stems from a final, unfinished work from 1975 during which Ader mysteriously disappeared, aged just 33.
Based on a journey sailing across the Atlantic, from Cape Cod to Land’s End, “In search of the Miraculous” was imbued with symbolic significance – both personally, as a European return for this Dutch artist based in America, and also as a paean to human endeavour, a voyage into the sublime. At the same time, it was, simply, a world-record attempt for a solo transatlantic crossing in the smallest craft to date, a mere four metres in length. But 10 months after setting sail, Ader’s partially submerged boat was found by a fishing vessel off the coast of Ireland. His body was never discovered.
The exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre, All is Falling, attempts to redeem him from being stereotyped as the James Dean of Conceptual Art, placing his brief working life in the context of artistic experimentation that characterised the early 1970s. In common with other practitioners of the time, he radically expanded the definition of what constitutes a work of art, both in his choice of medium – most of his works are performances, recorded in photographs or grainy 16mm film – and also in his appropriation of popular forms of expression such as flower-arranging, with the red, blue and yellow blooms referring to the archetypal colour- scheme of his artistic hero, Piet Mondrian.
The recurring theme throughout Ader’s oeuvre was that of failure – that the human condition is one of inevitable downfall. The idea was literalised in slapstick performances – the artist falling into a canal, tumbling off a rooftop, dropping from a tree or toppling over in the middle of a country road. Another work, showing the artist silently weeping, is about a failure in communication – its title is “I’m Too Sad to Tell You”.
In this light, Ader’s final, fatal piece can be reassessed – it wasn’t just a failure; rather, it was his most glorious, most heroic failure, the clearest articulation of his role as the fall guy for humanity’s hubris. ★★★★☆
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