In Search of the Miraculous: The Work and its Documentation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5944/etfvii.9.2021.28745Keywords:
Conceptual art; Bas Jan Ader; documentation; photography; In Search of the MiraculousAbstract
This article presents a set of documentary materials, partly unpublished, linked to the posthumous work In Search of the Miraculous (1975), by Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader. These materials are the «File 143/76» (Navy Archive of Ferrol) and a series of photographs taken by photojournalist Alberto Martí Villardefrancos, in A Coruña, in April 1976. The author maintains that these materials are essential to understand and complete this key work by Ader. To prove it he studies them in relation to other practices and theories related to Conceptual art, and contextualizes them in recent historiographic and museographic debates regarding the limits between the artwork and the document. The result of this analysis reinforces the singular and paradigmatic character of In Search of the Miraculous in the art of its time.
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