It is no co-incidence (not by chance) that we open the series of case studies with an analysis of Kawara On. In terms of the aesthetics of a survival art practice, Kawara On most clearly defines and embodies the aspects of Survival art practice but through his uniquely self-reflexive methods and patterns that he employed in his strict conceptual art practice which spanned nearly 60 years. Key aspects of the Survival Aesthetics practice can be (determined) de-constructed from On Kawara’s lifetime of works. The exhibition or project as medium, reference and reproduction, connection & collaboration,  and the critical ‘specifics of authorship’ are all crucial to understanding On’s works. However, what makes ‘On’ different from our recent contemporaries is that each of these key aspects in the survivalists project of On, were internally self-reflective and self-reproductive.

On Kawara was born on December 24, 1932. He moved to Tokyo in 1951, then went to Mexico with his father in 1959 where he stayed for three years, painting, attending art school and travelling. From 1962 to 1964 he moved between New York and Paris, travelling through Europe before settling in New York City in 1965, where he became a resident until his final days. On would travel extensively around the world for most of his life connecting and producing his art practice in all the places he went. The history of his movements in the world marks the start of this analysis on Kawara On’s survivalist approach beginning with the ‘Today Series’, Liquitex on canvas - 1966 – 2014. The Today series was On’s longest ongoing series of works in which he painted the date of the day that each painting was made. Kawara set up a self-restrictive rule to limit and control the production of the painting series. As legend tells it, If the painting was not completed in that same day it was initiated, Kawara would erase and destroy the surface of the painting and have to start a new date painting on another day.  Kawara used liquitex, a type of acrylic on self-constructed canvases. He always documented the date in the language and grammatical conventions of the country in which the painting was executed (i.e., “26. ÁG. 1995,” from Reykjavik, Iceland or “13 JUIN 2006,” from Monte Carlo).

The series began, From January 4, 1966, and The last Date Painting was made on July 10, 2014 just days before his death – passing / passed away. Although the paintings existed in various sizes and in various tones of black, blue and some occasionally in red, Kawara rarely deviated from the original form. In addition, he constructed boxes to archive the paintings in which he cut and placed newspaper articles of news headlines and events related to the exact day of the artworks production. This strategy located the paintings in time and place as well as creating a social historical reference to the day of its production.  Kawara registered each date painting in a journal and marked it on his famous One Hundred Years Calendar. A total of 48 journals therefore record the details of the painting’s size, color and newspaper headline, while the calendar uses colored dots to indicate the days in which a painting was made, and to record the number of days since the artist’s birth. Kawara created nearly 3,000 date paintings in more than 112 cities worldwide in a project that was planned to end only with his death. 

The minimal aesthetics of the work functioned as unmistakable representations of the artist's existence, his identity and became the signature icon of his work. It could be said that not only does the indexical and repetitious production of the series create an infinite internal loop of self-reference, self-reflection and self-reproduction, but that the paintings could also be considered self-portraits of the artist himself. In Yuki Okumura’s essay by Lei Yamabe “On Kawara’s Quantum Gravitational Body, or the Confinement of Space-Time and the Liberation of Consciousness,” ^[1] 2012 and in the interview I conducted with him, Okumura asserts that On Kawara was involved in a systematic production of self-portraiture.^[2] It seems there is no doubt that On Kawara projects had a conceptual focus on the concept of Time, but I will also argue that On’s intention was to document and archive his existence to support the survival of his work beyond his physical existence and to ensure his own historical legacy in the history of art. ‘On Kawara’ still exists...’^[3]

Alongside the creation of the Today Series, On Kawara  began another project that would record his daily existence in time and place but would have an even more effective function to make connections between the artists and other people in the artworld. His famous Title and Postcard series, “I AM STILL ALIVE” and  “I Got Up” were created between 1968 – 1979. This work was also accompanied by several other series of works including the ‘I Went’ and ‘I Met’ Postcard and photograph series. These series of postcards were sent to his friends detailing aspects of his life. In addition a series of telegrams were sent to various people bearing the message “I AM STILL ALIVE”. Between 1968 and 1979, All of the 1,500 ‘I Got Up’ cards On Kawara created list the artist’s time of getting up, the date, the place of residence and the name and address of the receiver.  On Kawara extended this series of postcards, ‘I Got Up At’, rubber-stamped with the time he got up that morning. This ongoing correspondence ranged from a single card to hundreds sent consecutively over a period of months; the gesture’s repetitive nature is offset by the artist’s peripatetic global wanderings and exceedingly irregular hours. In 1973 alone he sent postcards from twenty-eight cities. If we try to analyze Kawara’s intentions beyond him simply confirming his existence to himself and others, a theory can be derived that this was also his strategy to make contacts and connections in the artworld and to ensure the reception of his work and life project in the discourse of art history. By observing the records of his thousands of sent and received Postcards and Telegrams there are many notable names from the conceptual art and art gallerist community worldwide. Just to name a few of the artists and major figures in the international art market who received On Kawara's cards include, Sol lewitt, John Baldasari, Lucy.L. Lippard, Kenji Usami, Kenzo Tatsuno, Yutaka Kuriyama, Jean Pfaff, Leo Castelli, Kasper Konig, Lili Konig, Michael Sesteer, Bruno Bischofberger, etc. etc. 

Through his almost mechanical non-human approach to time, On Kawara’s conceptual record of documents, self-produced archives and activated artworks addresses some of the biggest human questions of all, that of existence and the inevitability of death. But these themes don't come without a bigger picture in On Kawara’s mind. How to live in history forever? Of all his works including his self-referential One Hundred Years Calendar, none are perhaps as definitive of his attitude to artistic survival as 1000000 years / One Million Years  , 1969 / 1993 / 2002.

One Million Years is one of the artist’s best-known works about the passage and marking of time. It lists each year for the one million-year period leading up to the artwork’s conception and the million years that follow it. But whether or not it was a part of On’s original conception, what makes this work function in a way that leads to dynamic reproducibility and connection to other producers is its ability to be translated into performance. It is usually performed, during which pairs of performers (typically one male and one female for each segment) read dates from each list in order, simultaneously performing One Million Years [Past] and One Million Years [Future]. Was the reading performance of the work a part of On’s original conception?

The artwork was first made in 1969, the year of the Woodstock music festival, major civil protests against the Vietnam War and man’s first landing on the moon. The first audio presentation of the reading of One Million Years occurred in 1993 during Kawara’s  yearlong solo exhibition “One Thousand Days One Million Years” at Dia Center for the Arts in New York. Visitors could hear One Million Years [Future] being read, while viewing One Million Years [Past] and a group of date paintings. The longest public reading from One Million Years took place at documenta 11 in 2002, where male and female participants sat side by side in a glass enclosure taking turns reading dates for the duration of the 100-day exhibition, switching between [Past] and [Future]. In 2004, the project traveled to Trafalgar Square in London for a continuous outdoor reading lasting 7 days and 7 nights. Since then, readings and recordings have taken place in cities around the world. Not only does One Million Years  find its re-production in performance but also as an architectural installation, installed in its recent re-enactments in white cubes inside museums and glass cubes in public spaces. The enactment of the work has embodied in form, the curators own reference of containing the performers and the reading of the performance in reference to the way On Kawara himself archived, stored and exhibited his works.

In the 1960’s When On Kawara began his lifetime work about the marking and passage of time, other artists such as the New Realists ( Nouveau réalisme group), Yves Klien and Arman(1928 – 2005) ‘accumulations’^[4], the Situationist International (SI) 1957 to 1972, Guy Debord (1931 - 1994) and the Artists of Fluxus such as John Cage and Yoko Ono had already begun shaping aesthetic approaches to concepts such as invisibility, the passing of time, text, instruction and notation. These documents could be mailed to other artists, critics and leading figures of the artworld . Apart from the use of the telephone as communication or recording device, text & type was the most accessible medium in that era. Some 45 years earlier around 1923, constructivist and Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895 – 1946) had process-ordered artworks to a factory over the phone, (EM 2 Telephone Picture1923), so it is reasonable to say that On Kawara was already developing in a conceptual international art atmosphere where concept, recording and archive had emerged as recognized artistic mediums. However in contrast, what sets On apart from his contemporaries is his dedicated, single mindedness to several productive processes where both the artists medium and the artists identity are set into a potentially infinite loop of replication and reproduction. His works secured him a historical legacy, not only through the rigorous preservation of the works materiality and information but through On’s own interpersonal interactions. Unlike other artists who replicated other artists processes or conceptual approaches to build intellectual structure and social network, On Kawara created an existentially generating system that references and reproduces himself.

^[1] Lei Yamabe , “On Kawara’s Quantum Gravitational Body, or the Confinement of Space-Time and the Liberation of Consciousness,” printed in On Kawara: Date Painting(s) in New York and 136 Other Cities, Ludion and David Zwirner, 2012 (English translation by Christopher Hill). (Originally published November 17th, 2014)

^[2] Interview conducted at Tokyo University of the Arts, Yuki Okumura Interview, by Jesse Hogan. Wed, Jan 31, 2018

& http://www.yukiokumura.com/CV/e.html.

^[3] Lei Yamabe, On the Passing of On Kawara . Original Japanese edition printed in Bijutsu Techo, vol. 66, no. 1010, p. 205, Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, Tokyo, 2014. English translation by Yuki Okumura Office Notebook, Contemporary Art Group, 2014

(English translation by Yuki Okumura with Jeffrey Ian Rosen) https://notebook.cagrp.org/on-the-passing-of-on-kawara-95bb0e2c4976

^[4] In 1960, Arman filled the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris with garbage, creating “Le Plein” (“Full Up”) as a counterpoint of the exhibition called “Le Vide” at the same gallery two years earlier by his friend Yves Klein.

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