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Lot Essay
‘Kawara is a master of calligraphy, a man of belief and, of course, one of the great artists of our time.’ – Christian Scheidermann
‘Yet On Kawara paints Today. Over and over again, thousands of times, in the notional shorthand of a host of languages. OCT. 15, 1973. 6 MRT. 1991. 1 MAR. 1969. To paint a date is not to paint the contents of a day, but simply to affirm: Today.’ – Tom McCarthy
Insisting on the profound truth of the calendar, On Kawara’s Today, or Date Paintings, faithfully document the date on which they were made. Aug. 31, 1999 is a large canvas upon which tidy, white text spells out the titular date against a monochromatic black background. Kawara began his Date paintings on January 4, 1966, and continued for nearly five decades; the extensive series is a meditation on the present through a system of self-imposed protocols. The artist did not produce a painting every day, but each painting could only be created on the actual date named; if a canvas was not completed by midnight, it was summarily destroyed. Ever a curious and experience traveller, the date’s format and language were determined by the country in which the artist was on that given day. To paint the background, Kawara layered and sanded down exactly four coats of paint. To create the text, he used an X-acto blade and ruler to trace the inscriptions. Any remaining imperfections were amended with precise and subtle alterations. Kawara then registered the painting in a journal, noting the colour, size, date, and subtitle; this information was also typed onto a sticker placed on the stretcher. The final work was kept in an individual cardboard box that Kawara also fabricated, containing a cutting taken that day from a local newspaper, often serving as the work’s subtitle. Encapsulating the never-ending progression of time was the dominant theme of Kawara’s practice, an art which contained, as critic Alan Jones pronounced, ‘the barest actuality of daily life’ (A. Jones, ‘Calendar of the Absurd’, Contemporanea, no. 8, November 1989). For I read, 1966-1995, Kawara collated newspaper clippings into loose-leaf folders. Printed the day after the Date painting to which it was linked, the clips report what transpired on that day. In a concurrent, albeit slightly more personal, work, I Got Up, 1968-1979, Kawara sent two tourist postcards every day, onto which he stamped the date, his name, and address where he was currently staying, and the time he woke up. As with the Today paintings, each postcard was imprinted on the date its text indicates. Within all these works, however, is the perpetual pressure of the past; once completed, each canvas, postcard and file outlives its initial context and, in consequence, is made significant as an object. Kawara’s practice both freezes time and is a function of time, so that each individual work becomes a relic. Roland Barthes theorized the death of the author to suggest a radical shift in the construction of meaning, an essential consideration for the Conceptual art movement, within which Kawara was a crucial figure. Indeed, Kawara entirely detached himself from his work, even refusing to be photographed. His denotative system of communication aligns his artistic practice with that of Joseph Kosuth and Adrian Piper, among others. As Barthes wrote in his seminal essay, ‘The removal of the Author… is not merely an historical fact or an act of writing; it utterly transforms the modern text’ (R. Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, Image – Music – Text, London, 1977, p. 145). The Today series suggests that the meaning of a work can be external to its canvas’ content; Kawara refrains from commenting on or imposing his own opinion about the days he commemorates. Unhindered by the artist’s presence, viewers are emboldened to incorporate, imagine and reinterpret their own experiences and memories in light of the given date. They, in turn, provide a subjective wash to the highly regulated schematic. At the same time, however, Kawara’s paintings function as repository and record of the varied nature of time, which he alludes to through the newspaper clippings and slight differences in scale, colour and language. Each canvas, as such, is an index of the day. Kawara’s intense, almost singular, focus on the here and now developed in response to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after which he failed to find rational or religious refuge; life seemed to him wholly subjective and lacking absolute truths, a realization which allowed him to celebrate the present moment within the eternal flow of time. Art historian Ben Highmore calls this ‘a life rendered through its commitment to days, to its use of days, to its involvements with the dailiness of days’ (B. Highmore, ‘‘I Make Love To The Days’: Accounting for On Kawara’, On Kawara: Silence, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2015, p. 209). Each painting is an affirmation of the now; it is again, today, the recurrent plunge into temporality, another measurement of a cosmic current.
‘Yet On Kawara paints Today. Over and over again, thousands of times, in the notional shorthand of a host of languages. OCT. 15, 1973. 6 MRT. 1991. 1 MAR. 1969. To paint a date is not to paint the contents of a day, but simply to affirm: Today.’ – Tom McCarthy
Insisting on the profound truth of the calendar, On Kawara’s Today, or Date Paintings, faithfully document the date on which they were made. Aug. 31, 1999 is a large canvas upon which tidy, white text spells out the titular date against a monochromatic black background. Kawara began his Date paintings on January 4, 1966, and continued for nearly five decades; the extensive series is a meditation on the present through a system of self-imposed protocols. The artist did not produce a painting every day, but each painting could only be created on the actual date named; if a canvas was not completed by midnight, it was summarily destroyed. Ever a curious and experience traveller, the date’s format and language were determined by the country in which the artist was on that given day. To paint the background, Kawara layered and sanded down exactly four coats of paint. To create the text, he used an X-acto blade and ruler to trace the inscriptions. Any remaining imperfections were amended with precise and subtle alterations. Kawara then registered the painting in a journal, noting the colour, size, date, and subtitle; this information was also typed onto a sticker placed on the stretcher. The final work was kept in an individual cardboard box that Kawara also fabricated, containing a cutting taken that day from a local newspaper, often serving as the work’s subtitle. Encapsulating the never-ending progression of time was the dominant theme of Kawara’s practice, an art which contained, as critic Alan Jones pronounced, ‘the barest actuality of daily life’ (A. Jones, ‘Calendar of the Absurd’, Contemporanea, no. 8, November 1989). For I read, 1966-1995, Kawara collated newspaper clippings into loose-leaf folders. Printed the day after the Date painting to which it was linked, the clips report what transpired on that day. In a concurrent, albeit slightly more personal, work, I Got Up, 1968-1979, Kawara sent two tourist postcards every day, onto which he stamped the date, his name, and address where he was currently staying, and the time he woke up. As with the Today paintings, each postcard was imprinted on the date its text indicates. Within all these works, however, is the perpetual pressure of the past; once completed, each canvas, postcard and file outlives its initial context and, in consequence, is made significant as an object. Kawara’s practice both freezes time and is a function of time, so that each individual work becomes a relic. Roland Barthes theorized the death of the author to suggest a radical shift in the construction of meaning, an essential consideration for the Conceptual art movement, within which Kawara was a crucial figure. Indeed, Kawara entirely detached himself from his work, even refusing to be photographed. His denotative system of communication aligns his artistic practice with that of Joseph Kosuth and Adrian Piper, among others. As Barthes wrote in his seminal essay, ‘The removal of the Author… is not merely an historical fact or an act of writing; it utterly transforms the modern text’ (R. Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, Image – Music – Text, London, 1977, p. 145). The Today series suggests that the meaning of a work can be external to its canvas’ content; Kawara refrains from commenting on or imposing his own opinion about the days he commemorates. Unhindered by the artist’s presence, viewers are emboldened to incorporate, imagine and reinterpret their own experiences and memories in light of the given date. They, in turn, provide a subjective wash to the highly regulated schematic. At the same time, however, Kawara’s paintings function as repository and record of the varied nature of time, which he alludes to through the newspaper clippings and slight differences in scale, colour and language. Each canvas, as such, is an index of the day. Kawara’s intense, almost singular, focus on the here and now developed in response to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after which he failed to find rational or religious refuge; life seemed to him wholly subjective and lacking absolute truths, a realization which allowed him to celebrate the present moment within the eternal flow of time. Art historian Ben Highmore calls this ‘a life rendered through its commitment to days, to its use of days, to its involvements with the dailiness of days’ (B. Highmore, ‘‘I Make Love To The Days’: Accounting for On Kawara’, On Kawara: Silence, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2015, p. 209). Each painting is an affirmation of the now; it is again, today, the recurrent plunge into temporality, another measurement of a cosmic current.