On Kawara

On Kawara (29,771 days) is regarded as one of the most influential conceptual artists of the 20th century. Over the course of five decades, he developed a precisely structured, yet quiet and profound body of work that explores chronological time, the relationship between the individual and history, and the transience of lived experience. As a central figure of the conceptual art movement that emerged in New York in the 1960s, Kawara created a significant oeuvre organized into clearly defined series that allow for a meditative investigation of time and place. After living in Tokyo, Mexico City, Paris, and New York, Kawara settled permanently in New York in 1965. Since 1978, his works have been represented by Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle. He gained international recognition through his Today Series (Date Paintings), which he began on January 4, 1966, in New York. Each painting shows the date of its creation in white letters on a monochrome background—usually in muted tones such as blue, red, or gray. The language of the date corresponds to the country in which Kawara was staying; in places using non-Latin scripts, he employed Esperanto. Each painting had to be completed on the same day it was started—if not, it was destroyed. Every work was stored in a custom-made cardboard box, often accompanied by a newspaper clipping from the same day. The series now comprises over 2,000 paintings and addresses the simultaneity of personal experience and universal structures of time. A central project in his oeuvre is One Million Years—a 24-volume text work divided into Past (dedicated to “all those who have lived and died”) and Future (to “the last one”). The work lists two million years, from 998,031 BC to the year 1,001,997 AD, and has been performed as an ongoing audio performance since 1993—in cities such as New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Dresden, Jakarta, Moscow, and at the Venice Biennale. In 1998, Kawara initiated the project Pure Consciousness, which presented seven Date Paintings in kindergartens around the world—including in Abidjan, London, Brooklyn, Thimphu, and Bethlehem.

Work by the artist is represented in museum collections internationally, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Kunstmuseum Basel; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; MoMa, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate, London; Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota City; Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Lenbachhaus Munich; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt.