Kirjahaku

On July 9, 1975, Dutch-born artist Bas Jan Ader set sail from Chatham, Massachusetts, on a thirteen-foot sailboat. He was bound for Falmouth, England, on the second leg of a three-part piece titled "In Search of the Miraculous". The damaged boat was found south of the western tip of Ireland nearly a year later. Ader was never seen again. Since his untimely death, Ader has achieved mythic status in the art world as a figure literally willing to die for his art. Considering the artist's legacy and concise oeuvre beyond the romantic and tragic associations that accompany his peculiar end, Alexander Dumbadze resituates Ader's art and life within the conceptual art world of Los Angeles in the early 1970s and offers a nuanced argument about artistic subjectivity that explains Ader's tremendous relevance to contemporary art. Bas Jan Ader blends biography, theoretical reflection, and archival research to draw a detailed picture of the world in which Ader's work was rooted: a vibrant international art scene populated with peers such as Ger van Elk, William Leavitt, and Allen Ruppersberg. Dumbadze looks closely at Ader's engagement with questions of free will and his ultimate success in creating art untainted by mediation. The first in-depth study of this enigmatic conceptual artist, Bas Jan Ader is a thoughtful reflection on the necessity of the creative act and its inescapable relation to death.

On July 9, 1975, artist Bas Jan Ader set sail from Chatham, Massachusetts, for Palmouth, England, on the second leg of a three-part piece titled In Search of the Miraculous. His damaged boat was found south of the western tip of Ireland nearly a year later. He was never seen again. Since his untimely death, Ader has become a legend in the art world as a figure literally willing to die for his art. Considering the artist's legacy and oeuvre beyond the mysterious circumstances of his peculiar end, Alexander Dumbadze resituates Ader's art and life within the Los Angeles conceptual art scene of the early 1970s. Blending biography, theoretical reflection, and archival research to draw a detailed picture of the world in which Ader's work was rooted, Bas Jan Ader is a thoughtful reflection on the necessity of the creative act and its inescapable relation to death.

A poignant account of the life and work of conceptual artist Jack Goldstein. A defining figure of the 1970s–80s New York art world, Jack Goldstein’s wide-ranging body of work, which included immaculate color films and radiant paintings of appropriated images composed by assistants, is both seductive and interpretively elusive. Goldstein’s legacy has been complicated by the mythology of his later years. Consumed by drug addiction, he dropped out of the art world in the 1990s, lived alone in an East Los Angeles trailer park, and resurfaced in a wave of critical fanfare at the turn of the millennium, before taking his own life in 2003. Employing his signature blend of biography, theoretical reflection, and archival research, Alexander Dumbadze examines Goldstein’s life and career, homing in on the artist’s refusal to distinguish between mental and actual images. Progressing chronologically through key moments in Goldstein’s artistic and intellectual formation, the book offers a deeply complex portrait of this significant artist, along with a nuanced meditation on the nature of images, the meaning of artistic subjectivity, and the consequences of holding unwavering faith in art.