Bas Jan Ader: Ocean Wave

by Bas Jan Ader, Koos Dalstra, Marion van Wijk

In 1975, the 33-year-old Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader, who had been living in Los Angeles, disappeared while working on the second act of his transatlantic triptych, In Search of the Miraculous. Part two was a solo crossing from Cape Cod to the Netherlands in his four-and-a-half-meter-long boat, the Ocean Wave. Nine months after his departure, a Spanish fishing crew found the boat drifting, empty. Marion Van Wijk and Koos Dalstra became fascinated by Ader in the 1990s, finding him a transit-artist avant la lettre, a loner in the conceptual art scene of his time, and an explorer building on the naval history of his native country. Ocean Wave is a sort of artistic biography, the result of 10 years of intensive research that revealed stunning new information, including a previously unseen Spanish naval report. It changes our understanding of Aderís life and work.

Paperback

First published March 1, 2006