Bas Jan Ader’s Ludic Conceptualism Performing a transnational identity Janna Schoenberger Following Huizinga’s ideas in his Homo Ludens (1938), I propose the term Ludic Conceptualism to describe the art that flourished in the Netherlands from 1959 to 1975. Unlike the more severe strands of conceptualism developed in New York and the United Kingdom, play was central to its Dutch incarnation. In this chapter I will show how Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader’s fixation on his identity, as staged through satirical jokes based on national stereotypes, is key in understanding his art. While a great deal of the humor is obvious in Ader’s work, there has been no serious inquiry into his comedic practice. I will posi- tion Ader within the framework of post-war humorous conceptual art prevalent both in the Netherlands and California, locales in which Ader had lived and studied. Using theories of humor and identity I will demonstrate how Ader’s jokes are closely tied to social contexts on both sides of the Atlantic, environ- ments relevant to the artist’s development in the course of his short career. A close examination of Ader’s work will reveal that the artist’s blurred identity as seen in his use of humor is, in fact, a central feature of his art. In 1960, Dutch teenager Bas Jan Ader (1942–1975) came to Bethesda, Maryland, for a high-school exchange program; by the end of the year, he had landed a solo exhibition at Galerie Realité in Washington, D.C., where, it is rumoured, Jacqueline Kennedy purchased one of his drawings (Timmerman 1993:74; Beenker 2006: 14). His precocious artistic success was celebrated in a number of Dutch news- papers. For example, e Hague’s liberal Het Vaderland (e Homeland) praised Ader’s accomplishment and noted that the one-man show was, “special recogni- tion which many artists never receive” (“Nederlander exposeert in Washington” 1961). 1 One holdout, however, was Bob Nahuizen’s article in the Dutch national newspaper Het Vrije Volk [e Free Nation], which focused not on his work but . e article title (translated as “Dutch man exhibits in Washington,”) points to national pride, as if Ader were representing the Netherlands. doi 10.1075/thr.2.13sch © 2015 John Benjamins Publishing Company