.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
‘Kawara is a master of calligraphy, a man of belief and, of course, one of the great artists of our time’ (Christian Scheidemann)
Painted in New York on 21 December 1995, the present work stems from On Kawara’s landmark series of Date Paintings. These works, also known collectively as the ‘Today’ series, stand among the twentieth century’s most profound conceptual projects. Begun on 4 January 1966, the Date Paintings seek to visualise the passage of time. Meticulously inscribing the day’s date in white upon a black canvas, the artist charted the breadth of his own lifespan. These works simultaneously insist upon the truth of the calendar and highlight its status as a human construct. Like a time capsule, each is accompanied by a box lined with newspaper clippings from the date in question: the present work includes a sheet detailing an incident at JFK airport and a piece about Martha Stewart. Another painting from the same year—27 Mars 1995—is held in the Dia Art Foundation, New York.
Kawara’s obsession with time may be traced to intense feelings of loss and alienation that he experienced during adolescence. Born in Japan in 1932, and raised during the years of the Second World War, he was thirteen years old when the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Numb with shock, he withdrew from school and family life, attempting in vain to process this cataclysmic horror. During this period, immersed in the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialist philosophers, he experienced what he would later describe as an ‘awakening of consciousness’ (O. Kawara, quoted in J. Watkins, ‘Where “I Don’t Know” Is the Right Answer’, in J. Watkins, R. Denizot et al., On Kawara, London 2002, p. 48). Time, he realised, was the only knowable constant: the one comprehensible reality in a fractured world. While the Date Paintings represent Kawara’s magnum opus, other series such as I Went, I Read and I Got Up would all revolve around this conviction.
Artists throughout history have tried to visualise temporality: from the memento mori paintings of the Old Masters to the Impressionists’ depictions of landscapes through the seasons. In the post-war period, artists including Roman Opałka and Alighiero Boetti sought to unravel its riddles further, interrogating the numeric systems that mark its passage. For Kawara, the Date Paintings were akin to a form of meditation, resulting from a precise, near-calligraphic process. The artist applied successive coats of paint using an increasingly fine brush, allowing each to dry before rubbing it down. Using a rule, set-square and X-Acto blade, he would carefully draw the outline of each character before adding several coats of white paint with a tapered brush. If a painting was not finished by midnight, it was discarded; if completed, it was documented in a journal with an accompanying paint swatch. The results not only stand as records of the day they were created, but also immortalise the time taken to make them, each flawless surface belying hours of meticulous labour.
Painted in New York on 21 December 1995, the present work stems from On Kawara’s landmark series of Date Paintings. These works, also known collectively as the ‘Today’ series, stand among the twentieth century’s most profound conceptual projects. Begun on 4 January 1966, the Date Paintings seek to visualise the passage of time. Meticulously inscribing the day’s date in white upon a black canvas, the artist charted the breadth of his own lifespan. These works simultaneously insist upon the truth of the calendar and highlight its status as a human construct. Like a time capsule, each is accompanied by a box lined with newspaper clippings from the date in question: the present work includes a sheet detailing an incident at JFK airport and a piece about Martha Stewart. Another painting from the same year—27 Mars 1995—is held in the Dia Art Foundation, New York.
Kawara’s obsession with time may be traced to intense feelings of loss and alienation that he experienced during adolescence. Born in Japan in 1932, and raised during the years of the Second World War, he was thirteen years old when the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Numb with shock, he withdrew from school and family life, attempting in vain to process this cataclysmic horror. During this period, immersed in the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialist philosophers, he experienced what he would later describe as an ‘awakening of consciousness’ (O. Kawara, quoted in J. Watkins, ‘Where “I Don’t Know” Is the Right Answer’, in J. Watkins, R. Denizot et al., On Kawara, London 2002, p. 48). Time, he realised, was the only knowable constant: the one comprehensible reality in a fractured world. While the Date Paintings represent Kawara’s magnum opus, other series such as I Went, I Read and I Got Up would all revolve around this conviction.
Artists throughout history have tried to visualise temporality: from the memento mori paintings of the Old Masters to the Impressionists’ depictions of landscapes through the seasons. In the post-war period, artists including Roman Opałka and Alighiero Boetti sought to unravel its riddles further, interrogating the numeric systems that mark its passage. For Kawara, the Date Paintings were akin to a form of meditation, resulting from a precise, near-calligraphic process. The artist applied successive coats of paint using an increasingly fine brush, allowing each to dry before rubbing it down. Using a rule, set-square and X-Acto blade, he would carefully draw the outline of each character before adding several coats of white paint with a tapered brush. If a painting was not finished by midnight, it was discarded; if completed, it was documented in a journal with an accompanying paint swatch. The results not only stand as records of the day they were created, but also immortalise the time taken to make them, each flawless surface belying hours of meticulous labour.