The image above is really about the small blue painting propped on the mantle. It is one of Japanese-born Conceptual artist On Kawara’s iconic Date Paintings. Each consists of the date on which the painting was executed, in hand-painted white lettering on a solid background. Kawara created nearly 3,000 date paintings over 50 years, each registered in a journal and marked on a One Hundred Years Calendar.

Photographer Candida Hofer made a book of the intimate spaces where Date Paintings reside in the homes of private collectors. We roamed the internet to collected images from On Kawara, Date Paintings in Private Collections. In many cases they are displayed in the place where the collector spends much of his or her time, or where they give the most inspiration and meaning. In these homes displaying the work of a seminal 20th century artist, most are uncharacteristically unstyled and rather plain, a relief to us from decorator-driven spaces.  They let On Kawara’s work resonate.

… In On Kawara’s Date Paintings Explained,  publishing house Phaidon’s tribute to On Kawara after his death in 2014, we found this:

Since its meaning is not predetermined, the real work of the piece lies ahead, in the encounter with the viewer, when it is exposed to the world. The vision it offers us is a moment in world history, yet it is an unnamed moment. It’s meaning remains to be seen, it remains to be spoken. It remains to be inhabited. It becomes a sign, and its enigmatic presence offers a horizon of the consciousness to be occupied and interpreted by the viewer.

 

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