in search of the miraculous

Oh my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible. 

Pindar

**** 

Did Ader feel protected because he was making a work of art? Protected in his pursuit of the sublime, which suspends all truth and postpones the realisation that we are, in fact, dully mortal? More than anyone, he played with this engagement  - laid himself open to the possibility of death. Taunted it. Provoked it. Fell for it. Sadly we can only glimpse at the enormity of Bas Jan Ader’s  feat because he failed...
 
It is perhaps the most unsettling fact of all to learn that The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst was found in Ader’s faculty locker in Irvine some time after he had disappeared. We have to suppose he read it. We have to suppose he imagined Crowhurst’s anguished journey in the light of his own incipient one, even if it was only to dismiss it. We have to suppose he knew, as he set out, that there were many ways to fail as there were many ways to succeed. 

Icarus, blinded by the elation of his ascent, failed and fell: fell to fail. His was a journey up that came down. Crowhurst’s was a journey along: flat, doomed and sorrily human. His fall was wretched, unimagined, unannounced and wholly practical. But for Bas Jan Ader to fall was to make a work of art. Whatever we believe or whatever we imagine, on a deep deep level, not to have fallen would have meant failure.

Tacita Dean, And he fell into the sea.




Ader's other falls. 

Beautiful post here about Ader + Amos.

'he sailed over the horizon and into ... oblivion'

You can watch this in parts on YouTube. Completely, completely gripping.

t & i

Tacita Dean: T & I. 2006. Photogravure on twenty-five sheets.

From MoMA:

Through drawings and films, Dean makes work that is frequently characterized by a poetic sensibility and fragmented narratives exploring past and present, fact and fiction. In this monumental printed work, she addresses themes of collective memory and lost history by combining the romantic legend of ill-fated medieval lovers Tristan and Isolde (whose initials give this piece its title) with the real-life tragedy of British sailor Donald Crowhurst. Dean often uses the sea and other maritime themes in her work, including the tale of Crowhurst, which has appeared in several of her projects.

In 1968 Crowhurst sailed from England for a solo, round-the-world yacht race and never returned. In T & I Dean connects the tale of this lost sailor to the story of Tristan and Isolde—whose tragic love story also hinges on sea voyages—through her majestic depiction of a barren, rocky coastline looking seaward. This work, based on a found postcard, includes the white, cryptic notes that Dean often scribbles on her prints and drawings. Here the musings include "start" and "stage 4," clear theatrical directions, as well as fragments of a poem by "WSG" about an artist killed in an accident. The twenty-five-sheet composition suggests a cinematic narrative sequence, while reading it as a unified image has a breathtaking, visionary impact. The rich velvety texture of the photogravure medium contributes a nineteenth-century patina that is ideally suited to the intensity and foreboding melancholy of the subject.

© 2010 Tacita Dean