Ocean Wave: Your Back to Oncoming Against Danger

Ocean Wave

Ocean Wave is a painting about Bastiaan Johan Christiaan Bas Jan Ader, who disappeared in 1975, a Dutch performance artist and photographer. In many of the photographs and film performances, he was the main character.

Graduated from the Otis College of Art and Design in 1965 with a BFA and graduate degree from the University of Claremont in 1967, then taught at various schools. He created a series of photographs and several short black-and-white films as the sole performer. “I’m Too Sad to Tell You,” a black-and-white movie of him crying and published in some satirical art magazine.

1975 left Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in a 13-foot (ca. 4 m) “Guppy 13” pocket cruiser called the Ocean Wave for a single-handed North Atlantic crossing to the Netherlands. His boat, found nine months later, bowed down, found by Spanish fishermen to A Coruña. The boat was stolen a year later. 

I have included this image in Self-propaganda, not clear whether it applies. Believing you could sail across the ocean on a boat that people call a Pocket Cruiser, effectively a small row boat with a roof. It requires a certain level of self-delusion or self-propaganda to convince oneself they’re capable of succeeding and denying the obvious danger; the artist must be arrogant and maintain this delusion.

To be able to create art, there is no support or affirmation from others; one must create regardless. He was not part of the corporate arts community, where their egos are fed by their own propaganda of the dealers remaining independent of it. Without this, you rely on your own hubris, which can go beyond the rational and can lead to disappearing in an ocean.

I looked at images of The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Japanese artist Hokusai, it was created in late 1831. For inspiration in this painting, Ocean Wave, I tried to create the finger-like effects at the edge of the wave.

Father was executed in 1944 by the Nazis for helping Jewish escape.