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One Work
Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous
"Bas Jan Ader disappeared at sea in 1975 while attempting to sail from the east coast of the United States to Europe as part of a project titled In Search of the Miraculous." The circumstances of his disappearance have led many interpreters to identify Ader with the role of the tragic romantic hero. This identification has obscured the fact that Ader's art was a critical investigation of precisely those romantic motives his persona has now come to be associated with. In this book, Jan Verwoert highlights the specific ways in which Ader's cycle of works explores those motives with an artistic approach that is as conceptual and analytic as it is poetic and existential.
- GenresArtNonfiction
72 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 26, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 10, 2008
Fans of Herzog maybe into Bas Jan Ader's conceptual art works. An amazing artist that is now phantom like due to his death while crossing the Atlantic on a small boat. To look at his work it is like seeing ink disappearing from a page. There is something beautiful and quite moving about his aesthetic and how that work is conveyed after his death.
July 20, 2025
One of the best books I’ve read this year. Thoughtful, engaging, and full of heart. Highly recommend!
March 22, 2016
A romantic tragic hero on a quest for the sublime.
"Ader boils down romantic grand emotion to the basic scenes, gestures and icons through which it is staged. The crucial point, however, is that he does so not to ironise, devalue or dismiss, but actually to try and redeem grand emotion - by showing that the truth of this emotion can be found in the full depth and intensity on the surface of these scenes."
SUBMITTING YOURSELF TO FAILURE:
"A tragic hero is someone who takes the conscious decision to carry out a plan that will inevitably lead to his fall. The tragic hero gets himself into a hopeless situation to resolve a crisis by bringing about a resolution that, because he will have sacrificed himself in the process of enforcing this resolution, will, in retrospect, appear to have been inevitable."
"His heroes act out tragic scenarios of existential adversity, but they do so with the psychological disposition of a stubborn child who cannot recognise tragedy for what it is and, because of that misrecognition, successfully manages to overcome it. They don't recognise reality as an obstacle. If they fall they simply get up and keep on pushing until reality gives up its resistance and allows them to have things their own way."
(Buster Keaton & slapstick comedy)
"The sight of someone crying in close-up or taking a plunge into a canal touches you because a cinematic rhetoric is played out in its most simple and effective form.
It is the crying for no reason and the falling without comment that invoke the tragic element which lies in the experience of the painful absence of an explanation for the existence of grief and failure."
"Ader's dissapearance appears like a terminal theatrical gesture, a grand exit that frames his existence as a work of art."
A tragic desire for the sublime.
"Ader boils down romantic grand emotion to the basic scenes, gestures and icons through which it is staged. The crucial point, however, is that he does so not to ironise, devalue or dismiss, but actually to try and redeem grand emotion - by showing that the truth of this emotion can be found in the full depth and intensity on the surface of these scenes."
SUBMITTING YOURSELF TO FAILURE:
"A tragic hero is someone who takes the conscious decision to carry out a plan that will inevitably lead to his fall. The tragic hero gets himself into a hopeless situation to resolve a crisis by bringing about a resolution that, because he will have sacrificed himself in the process of enforcing this resolution, will, in retrospect, appear to have been inevitable."
"His heroes act out tragic scenarios of existential adversity, but they do so with the psychological disposition of a stubborn child who cannot recognise tragedy for what it is and, because of that misrecognition, successfully manages to overcome it. They don't recognise reality as an obstacle. If they fall they simply get up and keep on pushing until reality gives up its resistance and allows them to have things their own way."
(Buster Keaton & slapstick comedy)
"The sight of someone crying in close-up or taking a plunge into a canal touches you because a cinematic rhetoric is played out in its most simple and effective form.
It is the crying for no reason and the falling without comment that invoke the tragic element which lies in the experience of the painful absence of an explanation for the existence of grief and failure."
"Ader's dissapearance appears like a terminal theatrical gesture, a grand exit that frames his existence as a work of art."
A tragic desire for the sublime.
September 9, 2007
In depth study of the conceptual framework of bas jan ader’s in search of the miraculous. verwoert does a good job in trying to pull ader out of the tragic artist role that his death bestowed on him and placing the project within the conceptual role that it meant to enact.
May 10, 2008
would love to love this "one work" series (which includes one on hollis frampton, whom i'm also a fan of) ...and bas jan ader's kinda super heroic ...but this book was disappointing--full of PhD-speak and turgid dissertation prose. good photos tho.
April 20, 2007
A good if obvious and not too compelling overview of Bas Jan Ader's work.
December 8, 2007
Wow, I can't wait until December 19th.
I can't wait to read this book!
I can't wait to read this book!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews