NOV. 23, 1996

On Kawara

1996

Liquitex (acrylic paint) on canvas

Dallas Museum of Art

In these paintings, On Kawara uses a systematic approach to document the passage of time. He began the Today series in 1966 and has been working on it ever since. The Date paintings are made on the date referred to in the title; if they are not finished by midnight of that date, they are destroyed. The order of information and the language used follow the convention of the country in which the painting was executed. The works presented here are drawn from each of the decades that Kawara has been making this series; each work ends in a six and was made ten years after the previous piece. Overall, Kawara’s Date paintings serve as a me