DEC. 1, 1974; DEC. 2, 1974; DEC. 3, 1974; DEC. 4, 1974; DEC. 5, 1974; DEC. 6, 1974; DEC. 7, 1974, Seven paintings from "Today", 1966–2013

On each of the seven small 25x33 cm canvases that make up this piece, On Kawara has written a date in white against a black background. Through the formal simplicity of his conceptual paintings, the artist engages in a reflection on time and the ways in which we parse it to pace our lives. In this work, the artist borrows the form and rhythm of the calendar to highlight the repetition (of a gesture or a protocol) with which we measure our daily lives. 

The series Today consists of almost 3,000 canvases, each one stating the date of its completion over a period ranging from 1966 to 2013. In this work, On Kawara added a newspaper clipping to the paintings that is preserved with the canvas in a box. By setting forth a social fact shared by everyone – the common organisation of time – and a manual, solitary practice such as painting, Kawara confronts the individual and collective dimensions of our experience of time and distils them to their purest state. Kawara questions the traditional role of the artist as based on the expression of his or her own individuality, erasing his own presence through the reproducibility of the process.

The Pinault Collection showed this work for the first at the Icones exhibition at Punta della Dogana in Venice in 2023