Updates, Live: Conceptual Art: On Kawara

On Kawara - Title, 1965
acrylic on three separate canvases
National Art Gallery, Washington DC

It follows all that applies to a triptych: the central panel carries the subject, the two lateral panels add to the meaning. The subject is 1965, the year when US started bombing Vietnam, 20 years after 1945, the year of Hiroshima: one thing.

It is of course a political manifesto here, and different viewers will have different views. One thing is beyond doubt: it is a superb example of Conceptual Art.

It was very useful for me, in order to understand better the concepts defining the Conceptual so to speak, to visit the On Kawara Room at the show organized at Hirshhorn. It was looking rather weird for a profane like me, while it was very illustrative for one of the ways followed by the Conceptualists: the art work as a statement about the accomplishment of a project. On Kawara named it date painting:he was developing one artistic project (white lettering on a solid background) during a single day; if finished, the accomplishment was marked putting the finished work in a cardboard box with the date indication; a newspaper excerpt from that day was attached; if not finished the work was destroyed.

And here in the room at Hitshhorn there were three such works on view: Oct 24, 1971, Oct 26, 1971, Oct 29, 1971. Each one consisting of a cardboard box, newspaper, acrylic paint on canvas (the lettering).

A fourth artwork of On Kawara, let me much more puzzled: One Million Years - For the Last One - For All Those Who Have Lived and Died 42/60, 1999, printed multiple; two signed volumes, 2001 pages each. It was a statement about the accomplishment of a work? Well, yes and no. Because only two of the volumes were actually finished: all the others were empty, as waiting to be filled with data, up to one million years. It was communicating, in a subtle way, that the work was in progress; and I started to think at the connections between Conceptual and Performance Art.