Kawara, On

▪ Japanese artist

Japanese form  Kawara On 

born Jan. 2, 1933, Kariya, Japan

      Japanese conceptual artist noted for several series of works that test concepts of time and diaristic revelation.

      After graduating from high school in 1951, Kawara moved to Tokyo. In 1953 his dispassionate paintings of dismembered bodies were exhibited at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art. He began to travel outside Japan in 1959; while continuing to travel incessantly, he made New York his home base from 1965 onward.

      On Jan. 4, 1966, Kawara began what is perhaps his best-known project, the ongoing Today series (sometimes known as the Date series). For this project, on every day he is so inclined, Kawara makes a small monochromatic painting upon which in white paint he carefully paints the date on which the painting is made. He follows several rules: (1) Any painting not finished by midnight will be abandoned. (2) Each painting is accompanied by a container that includes information about the artist's experiences that day (e.g., snippets from newspapers). (3) Each painting is tailored to language, dating system, and punctuation conventions used in the city in which Kawara is making the painting (e.g., 2.DEZ.1976 was painted in Berlin). Kawara made more than 2,000 paintings in the series in more than 100 cities around the world.

      Another of his projects, the I Got Up series of the 1970s, consists of dated postcards that he mailed to colleagues around the world and then reassembled for exhibition purposes. On each postcard he informed the recipient of the precise time he awoke on the day he mailed the card.

Additional Reading

Jonathan Watkins and René Denizot, On Kawara (2002), provides criticism and interpretation. Xavier Douroux and Franck Gautherot (eds.), Whole and Parts: 1964–1995 (1996), is an exhibition catalogue with text in English, German, French, and Japanese.

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