On Kawara

(1932-2014)

NOV. 27, 1984

Footnotes

Provenance
Lisson Gallery, London
Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin
Kohji Ogura Gallery, Nagoya
Private Collection, Japan
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exhibited
London, Lisson Gallery, On Kawara, 30 May – 28 June 1985

河原溫
NOV. 27, 1984
"星期二"
「今天」系列，1966-2013
壓克力 畫布 剪報 藝術家自選箱
1984年作

簽名：On Kawara （背面）

來源
倫敦，里森畫廊
柏林，Max Hetzler畫廊
名古屋，Kohji Ogura畫廊
日本私人收藏
現藏家得自上述來源

展覽
「河原溫」，里森畫廊，倫敦，1985年5月30日 - 6月28日

On Kawara stands as one of the most significant and influential figures in postwar conceptual art. His practice is inseparable from philosophical inquiry, persistently examining the traces of human existence against the relentless flow of time. Through poetic restraint and a methodical language of recording, Kawara constructed a modern lexicon of being. Born in Kariya, Aichi Prefecture, Kawara came of age under the shadow of war. The upheavals of postwar Japan and in particular, the devastating aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, profoundly shaped his lifelong preoccupation with the fundamental questions of "life", "death" and the condition of "existence". These existential concerns would later find disciplined expression in his mature artistic practice.

After completing high school in the 1950s, Kawara moved to Tokyo, where he immersed himself in philosophy, political theory and psychoanalysis, and became active in the city's avant-garde circles. In 1959, he relocated to Mexico with his father. There, while studying modern art, he also began to travel extensively, a formative experience that would come to define his worldview. A lifelong traveler and observer, Kawara eventually settled in New York in 1964, where he embarked on a five-decade career that would establish him as a central voice in conceptual art.

By the late 1950s, in the aftermath of Abstract Expressionism and the École de Paris, many artists had come to view expressive gesture as emptied of its original vitality. This dissatisfaction gave rise to a questioning of traditional media and a redefinition of painting itself. Increasingly, painting was conceived as an autonomous system detached from representation and rooted instead in the primacy of the idea. Situated in New York, the crucible of postwar artistic innovation, Kawara responded to this intellectual and artistic climate by developing a practice that embodied the rigor and clarity of conceptual art while asserting the artist's own existence within time.

On January 4, 1966, Kawara began his Today series (commonly known as Date Paintings). From 1966 to 2013, he produced nearly 3,000 works across more than 130 cities worldwide. Each canvas bears a monochromatic ground—typically blue, red, or grey—upon which the date of execution is inscribed in white, rendered according to the language, format and typographic conventions of the location in which it was painted. Kawara set strict parameters for the series: each work had to be completed on the same day it was begun, a process requiring hours of focused labour. If the painting was not finished by midnight, it would be destroyed. This self-imposed discipline reveals not only Kawara's formal rigor but also his profound meditation on the passage of time. In translating the flow of days into a material record, Kawara transformed the act of marking time into an existential gesture.

After completing each Date Painting, Kawara would craft a custom-made box for the work and, beginning in 1967, typically inserted clippings from a local newspaper, juxtaposing the austere precision of the date with the fragmented realities of the day's events. Though these newspaper fragments are partial and fleeting, they serve as historical and cultural anchors, situating the work within a specific time and place while inviting contemplation of time's transience. What appears, at first glance, to be a simple daily repetition of painted dates, in fact, encapsulates the very essence of conceptual art—where the act of making transcends representation and becomes a practice of ideas and a trace of time. Kawara's disciplined ritual i.e. painting the date by hand, constructing its box, and affixing the newspaper clippings, is not merely procedural; it is a sacred gesture, a quiet ceremony of bearing witness to existence.

The highlight lot of this auction, NOV. 27, 1984 ("Tuesday", From Today, 1966-2013), bears only the date "NOV. 27, 1984," rendered in crisp white sans-serif letters. Yet this seemingly neutral date holds profound resonance. Encountering it in 2025, forty-one years after its creation in the United States, we are not merely observing a record of a day gone by. Instead, we are drawn into a philosophical reflection on time itself. Each date is a declaration of presence, an affirmation of life's fleeting continuity, and an invitation to elevate the ordinary rhythms of existence to a universal scale. Through this lens, Kawara transforms the mundane into the metaphysical, imbuing every passing moment with the potential to bear witness to history, humanity, and the continuity of being.

Across art history, both East and West, the notion of time has remained a central theme, not only as subject matter but as an artistic approach. From Claude Monet's Haystacks and Water Lilies to Kawara's Date Paintings, artists have long sought to translate the impermanence of perception and the endurance of memory into visual form. Monet's serial studies captured the shifting interplay of light, colour and atmosphere, revealing the beauty of the ephemeral. Kawara, by contrast, distilled time to its most essential mark, the written date, presenting time itself as a record and a universal signifier of existence.

Despite their distinct sensibilities, Monet and Kawara share a devotion to repetition as a means of understanding temporality. For Monet, time manifests through sensual variations in nature and light; for Kawara, through the rational discipline of daily inscription, he confronted the abstraction and vagueness of time. One embodies the fluid, sensory passage of time; the other, its intellectual and existential persistence. Together, they reveal the duality of time as both change and constancy, perception and proof, transforming "time" into a central proposition of art.

From the simple yet profound idea of Today, Kawara captured time's ceaseless movement, embedding quiet markers within its infinite continuum. His work transcends autobiography, through repetition and ritual, it becomes a collective meditation on memory, awareness, and being. Each Date Painting opens like a time capsule, transporting us simultaneously to the moment of its making and to our own consciousness of the present. In standing before it, we, too, participate in the act of witnessing time.

As time advances, never to return, On Kawara's Today captures the impermanence of each passing day in a form of distilled clarity, transforming the transient into the eternal. Within this continuum of dates, each painting quietly echoes the miracle of existence, offering a moment of stillness amid the relentless passage of time. In essence, this is the profound core of Kawara's art: an act of preservation against oblivion, a meditation on being. It is this very quality that endows NOV. 27, 1984 with its singular and enduring place in the history of contemporary art.

Beyond the Today series, On Kawara pursued a range of conceptual experiments that extended his meditation on time, existence, and communication. In I Got Up (1968-1979), he recorded his daily waking time with rubber stamps and mailed postcards documenting the act, a modest gesture that transformed routine into ritual. In I Am Still Alive (1970-2000), Kawara repeatedly transmitted the terse message "I am still alive" via telegram, converting the most fundamental state of being into linguistic form and entrusting its transmission to the systems of post and telegraph, thereby expanding the very notion of artistic completion. Meanwhile, One Million Years (1970-1998) employed printed text to chronicle a million years into the past and into the future, rendering the abstract magnitude of time as a tangible archive.

It was in that intellectually fertile and formally diverse era that On Kawara discovered a language entirely his own. Through silence, discipline, and restraint, Kawara not only embodied the conceptual rigor of the 1960s avant-garde but also transcended its linguistic and logical confines, returning to a primal meditation on existence itself. His gesture was simple yet monumental: rather than speak, he marked each passing day with a date, a newspaper clipping, and a ritual, inscribing, in essence, the words "I was here today." In this quiet persistence lies a profound confrontation with both the vastness of time and the void of being.

On Kawara's contributions have been recognized by the world's leading art institutions. His landmark retrospective On Kawara — Silence was presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2015. His works reside in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou (Paris), Tate Modern (London), Museum Ludwig (Cologne), the National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo), and Kunstmuseum Basel, among many others. He participated in major international exhibitions including the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel, and was represented by leading galleries worldwide. Today, On Kawara endures as one of the most quietly powerful and internationally influential figures in the history of contemporary art.

河原溫（1932–2014）是日本戰後最重要且極具影響力的觀念藝術家之一。他的藝術實踐與哲學思辨緊密交織，聚焦於人類在時間洪流中存在的痕跡，透過詩意而簡潔的語言與嚴謹的記錄方式，開創出屬於現代的存在語言。出生於日本愛知縣刈谷市的河原溫，他的成長過程在戰爭陰影中度過，二戰後日本的劇變，以及廣島與長崎原子彈轟炸所帶來的巨大創傷。這些經歷深刻地影響了他一生對「生命」、「存在」、「死亡」等終極命題的追問，並成為於他日後藝術創作的核心。

1950年代河原溫高中畢業後，他定居東京，廣泛閱讀哲學、政治理論與精神分析等思想著作，並曾活躍於當地前衛藝術圈。1959年，他跟著父親一同移居墨西哥，在此除了學習現代藝術之外，更遊歷各國，這段經歷為他日後的創作深具啟發性。長年作為旅行者與觀察者的河原溫最終於1964年定居紐約，並展開其近五十年的藝術創作生涯。

1950年代末，在抽象表現主義和巴黎畫派之後，許多藝術家認為充滿動感筆觸的繪畫方式已經失去了最初的力量與意義，並對傳統媒材與形式產生強烈質疑與反動，進而開始思考如何重振繪畫。許多藝術家開始嘗試將畫面本身視為一種完全獨立、與外在現實無關的存在，他們刻意避免使用那些過於情緒化或帶有超驗意味的表現手法，並將「觀念」視為創作的核心。當時身處戰後繪畫發展重鎮—紐約的河原溫，在這樣背景的催化下，透過他的創作在觀念藝術的發展歷程中，見證他的「存在」。

1966年1月4日，河原溫開始創作「今天」系列（亦稱「日期繪畫」），自1966年起至2013年，藝術家總共創作了約三千件日期繪畫，創作地點遍及全球130多個城市。每幅畫布以藍、紅、灰等單色為底，僅以白色顏料精確標示當日日期，並需依照所在地語言、日期格式與排版慣例書寫。藝術家為「今天」系列設下了規則，所有作品都必需在當天完成，平均需耗費8至9小時，相當於一整天的勞動。如果未能在當日午夜前完工，該作品將被銷毀。這種自我規範不僅體現了藝術家的紀律，也反映出他對時間流逝的深刻感知。

作品完成後，河原會為每件畫作製作專屬紙盒，並放入當地報紙的剪報，將冷峻的日期與真實世界中當日發生的事件並置，儘管報紙只是破碎的片段，它們卻為畫作提供了某種歷史與文化的參照，形成一種強烈而耐人尋味的對比。「今天」系列表面上是每日重複的日期書寫，實則深刻體現了觀念藝術的核心精神—藝術不再依賴圖像的再現，而成為一種觀念的實踐與時間的軌跡。河原溫每日親手書寫日期、製作專屬紙盒、剪貼當地報紙，這些看似例行公事的動作，其實是一種高度儀式化的存在見證。

此次拍賣的重點作品《NOV. 27, 1984》（"星期二"，「今天」系列，1966-2013）畫面僅以白色無襯線字體標示該畫創作的日期「NOV. 27, 1984」，但其意義遠遠超越冰冷的日期。2025年的今天，當我們凝視著這幅作品，不只是回望四十一年前河原溫於美國某處完成這一日常儀式，更像是進入一場關於時間的哲學之旅。每一個日期，都是存在的證明，是將個人經驗與日常生命提升至宇宙維度的邀請。這種凝視，將每一天的平凡轉化為永恆，使生命中每個微小的瞬間，都充滿見證歷史與人性的可能性。

回顧古今中外，在現代與當代藝術中，「時間」常被視為不僅是題材，更是創作方法本身。從印象派藝術家莫內的風景畫到河原溫的觀念藝術實踐，藝術家們以各自的語言回應時間的流動、記憶與存在的痕跡。莫內的系列繪畫透過不斷描繪相同主題（如《乾草堆》或《睡蓮》），呈現自然景物在不同時間與光線下的變化，強調感知經驗的流動與瞬間的美感。而河原溫的「日期繪畫」系列則採取極簡的形式，以單色背景與白字標示每一幅畫完成的具體日期，強調的是時間本身作為存在的證明與紀錄。

儘管形式與美學立場大相徑庭，兩者皆以「重複」作為創作核心，並關注時間如何在作品中留下痕跡。莫內是透過自然與光影的變化描繪時間的流逝，河原溫則以日復一日的紀錄對抗時間的抽象與遺忘。前者是感性與視覺的變奏，後者是理性與概念的堅持，兩者共同將「時間」轉化為藝術的核心命題。

河原溫以「今天」為原點，將流動的時間凝鍊於畫布之上，宛如在時間長河中設置一枚靜默的浮標。他的創作不僅是對個人存在的持續書寫，更透過形式上的重複與儀式化操作，引導觀者參與記憶的建構，並再度體驗時間與空間的交錯。每一次對作品的凝視，都如同開啟一枚「時光膠囊」──觀者被帶回創作當日的片刻，在凝望與回望之間，重新定位自我於歷史與當下的座標。當時間不斷推進、無法回返，「今天」系列以極簡而純粹的形式，將稍縱即逝的日常記憶保存為永恆的見證。在無數日期節點之中，它持續為宇宙與人性頌唱存在的奇蹟。這正是河原溫藝術的深義，也是《NOV. 27, 1984》在當代藝術史中不可取代的位置。

除了「今天」系列之外，河原溫亦展開多種持續性的觀念實驗。例如在「I Got Up」(1968-1979) 系列中，他於1970年代每日以橡皮圖章記錄起床時間，並將明信片寄出；「I Am Still Alive」(1970-2000) 則透過電報反覆傳遞「我仍然活著」的訊息，把生命狀態轉化為語言符號，並交由郵政與電報系統傳遞，進一步拓展了「作品完成」的定義。而「One Million Years」(1970-1998) 則以朗誦與列印的方式，記錄過去與未來各一百萬年，使抽象的時間概念化為可觸知的檔案。

正是在那個觀念繁盛、形式多元的時代，河原溫找到了屬於自己的語言。他的創作既呼應了當時觀念藝術對「藝術是什麼」的本質追問，又超越語言與邏輯的框架，回到人類最根本的存在狀態──他不發聲，只以日期、報紙與行動記錄「我今天在這裡」，以日復一日的重複回應時間的無盡流逝與存在的空無。這樣的創作姿態，使他不僅是1960年代觀念藝術的先驅者，更以其沉默的力量建構出獨特的美學與精神哲學。

河原溫的藝術成就，獲得全球頂尖美術館的高度肯定與收藏。他曾於紐約古根漢美術館舉辦最完整的回顧展「On Kawara — Silence」（2015），作品亦為紐約現代藝術博物館、舊金山現代藝術博物館、巴黎龐畢度中心、英國泰特現代美術館、科隆路德維希博物館、東京國立近代美術館、巴塞爾藝術館等機構永久典藏。此外，他的作品也多次參與威尼斯雙年展、德國卡塞爾文件展等國際重要大型展覽，並由多家國際頂尖畫廊代理，為當代藝術史上最具國際影響力的藝術家之一。