Bas Jan Ader - Death is Elsewhere" by Alexander Dumbadze

ISBN: 978-0-226-038537 The University of Chicago Press

"Bas Jan Ader: Death is Elsewhere" by Alexander Dumbadze (The University of Chicago Press)

I think partly due to the deaths of David Bowie and Tony Conrad, I felt great sorrow reading this book on the artist Bas Jan Ader.   I only came upon his work maybe 20 years ago, which is odd, because he was very much of a Los Angeles based conceptual artist.   A lot of work deals with space and falling - meaning that gravity itself pulls you down.  On one level, he is sort of a Buster Keaton figure, but instead of laughter, his work is profoundly sad.   He has documented his "performances' in photographs as well as on video/film.  

"Death is Elsewhere" is half biography and the other part is a critique of his work.  It's fascinating to know about his Los Angeles existence, and how he mixed in with other artists of that time and place. He had one foot in Holland, and the other in Los Angeles.  There is something very European about his work. Yet, I can see the Los Angeles side of his work as well.  Place or location is always interesting or important. It is not actual locations, but the state of his mind or the state of his work and how that works within an American or Europan context.   The author Alexander Dumbadze does an excellent job in placing Ader's work in the context of 1970s America as well as noting the mysterious aspect of his work.  On one level, it is quite emotional, due to his death by being lost in the sea.  For an art project (or was it?) he planned to take a small sailing boat from the east coast of the U.S. to Holland or Europe.  Which sounds crazy, but Ader was an experienced man of the high seas, so if anyone could have done this, he could.  Sadly he disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean.    

What I find interesting about his work, is that it does remind me of Keaton, who I think is the great American artist of the 20th century.  I don't think Ader meant to address or comment on Keaton's method of working with machine and weather / nature, but there are similarities with Ader dealing with gravity or fighting against the urge of gravity.   So, that alone is quite moving - yet, we know he died a very young man, and therefore we're just capturing a moment of time of this artist.  He should have a longer career or life - because the work, although it hints of failure or even death, I don't think that is what his work is really about.  I think he was working on something much longer or long-term, but alas, nature took him perhaps by surprise.   Fascinating critique/bio on what I think is an important artist. 

April 19, 2014

April 19, 2014

As a child, I lived not that far away from the legendary and iconic “pink” residence of Jayne Mansfield.   The thing is, even though close to my home, I never seen the place.  I have read about it, and people around me talked about it, but actually seeing the home never happened for me.  I also believe the house was right on Sunset Boulevard.  Where I must have passed numerous times, but I have no recollection of seeing the place.  Now come to think of it Jayne Mansfield, herself was like a phantom figure through out my childhood.  

I used to have dreams about her when I was a child, which was strange, because I knew who she was, mostly through looking at movie magazines at the time.  There were quite a few publications in the local market, so while my parents were shopping, I would dip into the world of fantasy, knowing very well, that is what it was.  I knew the difference between the life in front of me, and the life projected on a huge screen or on my portable black and white TV set.  I think throughout my knowledge of Jayne Mansfield, I thought of her as a fictional character, which is probably why I didn’t ever see the pink palace.  I probably thought it was a made-up location, and often people used Sunset Boulevard as an address, but nothing exists there.  For example, “77 Sunset Strip” is not a real address.  I knew that, so I just presumed that Mansfield and her pink palace were just the work of those whose job was to make illusions. 

I was shocked one day when someone told me that Eliot Ness actually existed, where for sure I could just swore that he was a fictional character on the great TV show “The Untouchables.” At the time it never dawned on me that the show was based on a true story with real characters from the rolling 20s.  I lived a life that had a hard time telling what was illusion and what was true.  For instance I always admired the westerns I saw on TV, especially Wyatt Earp.   It was a shock to me that all cowboys were not dandies!   So, it was a weird position to be a part of life, where one had to decide what was real or not real.   As you can gather, I kept getting the names and stories mixed up.  To me, Mansfield living in a pink palace seemed totally unreal. Yet Hugh O’Brian as Wyatt Earp was totally realistic to me.  Go figure!

For the past two years, I have been looking high and low for an album by the Dudley Moore Trio, which I thought, perhaps this record doesn’t exist.   I was never a huge fan of his films he made in Hollywood, but I did see some footage of him and Peter Cook together, and that got me interested in his music.   I have been told that he was a serious musician and jazz composer.   Yet when I went to a record store, I could never find his music!  I started to suspect that perhaps this was an imaginary or fictional aspect of the Moore narrative.  Or maybe it was a part he played in a film or TV show, and people just presumed that he was also a talented musician?   Today, someone sent me an actual copy of one of his early albums, and presto, he is a musician and a damn good one at that!  So he does exist in that role, and I was wrong about him not playing music.  

Identity confusion is very much part of my personal make-up.  It is one reason why I don’t participate in national or local politics, because I can’t trust my judgement, when it comes to voting for someone or not.  I’m totally swayed by a commercial and I’m often proven wrong by me being so gullible. 

Funny, but the one thing I have seen that cuts through the idea of illusion for me is Bas Jan Ader’s conceptual piece “Broken Fall (geometric).”   Here in stark black and white,  you see the artist trying to fall on a little stand somewhere in a rural area of Holland.  Unless you’re a professional stuntman, it is very difficult to actually fall down on purpose.   Here I see Jan Ader struggling with the idea of falling, but of course, he stops himself, because it is natural to do so.  Finally he does topple over, and watching this short film makes me feel emotional, but not only that, but I also feel I am watching something that is very real.  The thing is I have to basically trust what is in front of me, and allow myself to be driven to another landscape - whatever that is real or not is just something I have to cope with on a regular basis.