In dreams begin responsibilities: when Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader was lost at sea in 1975, he left behind a slim body of mostly photo-based work. Now posthumous editions of some of these pieces are raising provocative questions - Issues & Commentary - Critical Essay

Art in America, Feb, 2004 by Wade Saunders

Patrick Painter Editions, Inc, of Vancouver and Hang Kong, has made a specialty of publishing old material in new formats, creating primary market pieces from work generally being bought and sold in the secondary market. For instance, in 1997, Painter Editions released a suite of nine 16 by-16-inch color photographs that are the images Ed Ruscha included in his book Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass (1968). In 1999, they published an edition comprising 30 15-by-15-inch black-and-white photographs, printed full negative, which Ruscha had used, generally cropped, in his book Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles (1967). Ruscha approved and made money from these editions. He presumably was pleased to see his images go from being the contents of an artist's book to being independent artworks.

Ader presented his body mastered by gravity in several pieces. I remain struck by haw real his actions were. Nothing was faked or simulated. He and the wooden chair he had been seated on rolled down the roof of his house, Ader tumbling into the shrubbery in front of it (Fall I, Los Angeles, 1970, a 24-second--including 6 seconds of title--black-and-white silent 16mm film shot by William Leavitt). He rode a bicycle, with a bouquet of flowers held between left hand and handlebar, into the Reguliersgracht, a canal in Amsterdam (Fall II, Amsterdam, 1970, a 19-second--including 6 seconds of title black-and-white silent 16mm film shot by van Elk). In 1970, Ader published Fall Bas Jan Ader, a 48-page, 7-by-7-inch book showing selected stills from these two films.

Broken Fall (Organic) Amsterdamse Bus, Holland (1971) is a 104-second--including 18 seconds of title--black and-white silent 16mm film in which we see Ader fall from a tree. The film was shot by Peter Bakker. Several 35mm black-and-white still negatives were made simultaneously with the filming. Ader chose an image from among those negatives for the announcement and the poster of his 1972 show at the Kabinett fur Aktuelle Kunst, in Bremerhaven, Germany; he cropped the picture differently in the two instances. Broken Fall (Organic) Amsterdamse Bos, Holland (1971/1994) is this image printed full frame as a stand-alone, 18-by-25-inch black-and-white photograph. It was approved by the Ader estate, post-Andriesse, and published by Patrick Painter Editions. I saw it in Paris.

In the picture, we first notice a tree in a bucolic park and then see Ader's vertically stretched body in midair, perhaps 3 feet below a tree branch and i0 feet above a small canal. The print is very grainy, and his body seems of the same order as the leaves and branches of the tree. Falling has had a bad rap since Genesis, and many of us have woken with a start from falls in our dreams. Yet managed fails--facilitated by playground slides, roller coasters, diving boards figure among life's pleasurable releases. While Yves Klein, in his Leap into the. Void (1960), remains suspended for eternity in the space before a window, Ader's body here seems to be just passing through, like Icarus plunging into the sea in Bruegel's painting, and Auden's poem.