ON DATE PAINTING
The first Date Painter was On Kawara. He was born in Japan on Christmas Eve, 1932, began Date Painting in New York on JAN.4, 1966, and died in 2014 after having been alive for 29,771 days and having made approximately 2,700 Date Paintings. If you want to know more about this most complex and creative spirit, please go to onkawara.co.uk, which is a website that was begun in 2021 and is ongoing.
A few days ago an artist-friend suggested I split that original website into two. The first would tell the story of On Kawara in a fairly straightforward way, albeit that he didn't encourage photos to be taken of himself, omitted to make any public statements about his work, and was an extremely private individual. Also to be borne in mind is that I find it extremely difficult to leave myself out of any biographical work. See my books on those equally creative spirits, Enid Blyton and Evelyn Waugh, for examples of such (auto)biographical writing. Nevertheless, that's what I aim to do: make that first site focus on On Kawara's extraordinary achievement.
The second site, this one, would show how I have been using On Kawara's philosophy and art practice - in particular his Date Painting, but also his daily postcard writing - to add zest to my own existence. Is that clear? How could it be! You will have to dip into the substance of the work, the 'GAME ON' essays, and make your own mind up, dear reader.
'GAME ON' is series of self-contained investigations. Each is inspired by a knowledge of On Kawara's life, art and legacy, but in different ways. On Kawara can be approached from many angles. Every one of which (so far) leads to enlightenment. Or do I mean endarkenment, encroaching endarkenment?
There are lots of these essays. I add to them every month. It seems I can't stop. I file them in the order they were written as there is no point in looking for a more telling organising principle than the chronological one. In other words, there is no more compelling pattern than the earth revolving about its axis (daily) while rotating about the sun (yearly). Day one, day two, day three. That gives us a splendid prose poem. Year one, year two, year three. That gives us a whole shelf of essays.
Will the day come when I no longer want to make a Date Painting? Oh yes, as soon as I find myself with nothing to say about said Date Painting. That's when I'll stop.
It was when I was in the middle of making the above Date Painting, which is to say yesterday, that I realised I was going to split what has occasionally been called an 'awesome' website into two.
I trust I haven't miscalculated: I hope to double my readership, not to halve it.
Duncan McLaren
DEC.11, 2025
