The surface of Bas Jan Ader’s most widely known works depict the artist walking out into the world at the mercy of capricious nature. Powerful forces merge—the inexorable physical laws of the universe and the urge to articulate one’s inner emotional state as truth. One man against nature.

The myth surrounding Ader has dissipated over time, yet a critical understanding of his work remains somewhat obscured. The ill-fated voyage of In search of the miraculous, 1973—a performance in which the artist went missing after sailing out of Chatham, Massachusetts, on a tiny skiff to traverse the Atlantic—and