On Kawara: Life As Art, Painting Time

[00:00:13] As you know, Exhibitionistas is one year old. We're very excited with this second year and we're also excited to welcome new co-hosts that will always bring a contrasting position to mind, whether it's because like Emily they do not work in the contemporary art field or maybe they have different roles within it, which will be the case for my hosts today.

[00:00:39] We have an amazing episode. We were very inspired by the absolutely incredible opportunity to see On Kawara's date paintings in a very encompassing exhibition at David's Werner Gallery in London.

[00:00:55] We do mention the foundation that On Kawara founded during his lifetime, the One Million Years Foundation. And we will have the links if you want to check it out. I also make a little mistake. I mix the names of two very, very prominent American artists, Robert Smithson and Robert Morris.

[00:01:23] It was Robert Morris indeed who created the artwork box with the sound of its own making in 1961. So apologies for that. And I think that's about it. Yes, we have a video version now. So if you're more of a visual person, the videos do have images.

[00:01:48] But if you're an audio person, if you like the experience of closing your eyes and imagining yourself at David's Werner Gallery, do it. Audio is amazing. So let's do this. Let's start this incredible episode with my amazing co-host, Liberté Nouti.

[00:02:20] Welcome to Exhibitionistas, the podcast where we visit exhibitions so that you have to all so that you can experience them vicariously through us. So today we have a very special one. We are talking about the exhibition at David's Werner Gallery in London of the date paintings by On Kawara. It was quite the experience. So the rule is very simple.

[00:02:47] My co-host and I visit the exhibition separately and compare notes during the recording. And today my co-host is none other than Liberté Nouti, who you know from a previous episode where she was our guest talking about art advisory. She is indeed an art advisor, specialized in modern art and a tiny bit of contemporary art.

[00:03:13] But she has such an acute and keen eye that it's going to be a pleasure to talk about the exhibition with her today. I am Joanna P.R. Neves, contemporary art writer and curator and artistic director of Drawing Now Paris. So Liberté, thank you so much for being here, for counterbalancing my more research-focused experience of contemporary art

[00:03:42] and bringing maybe the experience and the point of view of a more market-driven job and experience in the art world. But most of all, thank you so much for being here and for being my co-host today. So nice to be back, Joanna. We must confess to your audience that we've made an exception to your podcast. Oops! Oops! Oops!

[00:04:06] You are revealing the inside and the backstage of the episodes, you naughty co-host. Okay, go ahead and say it. We went back together. I didn't really understand the rule of the time. We went back together and yet we look at it separately. And when we went, I promised you I shall not share my views during our exhibition. And I said, no matter what. And I think we did. We did.

[00:04:35] We were very wise and very contained. I'm very proud of us, honestly. But Liberté, how was your weekend culture? I thought it was a really intense week. First was the commemoration of the 80 years of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp, which I watched on TV. And I thought it was so emotional to hear the last survivors who are now in their 90s.

[00:05:05] So much hardship and forgiveness at the same time. And really the message was from all of them in their different ways. Was they want us to remember. I watched The Rise of the Nazi, which is three-part BBC documentaries.

[00:05:23] And it really shows how Germany went from a democracy, the Weimar Republic, to a totalitarian system. And this is so interesting to watch 100 years after. It goes so quickly. And it's just little things which kind of brings that type of regime. And it shows the French... I wonder why you're speaking about that at this moment.

[00:05:54] Nothing in the world makes us think of the potentiality of a new form of fascism, right? And populism. That's really... And populism. But what's interesting coming to our subject is he also made me think of Onkohawa, who is a child of the Second World War. He's a Japanese person who witnessed Hiroshima when he was an adolescent. Yeah, it had a huge impact on him.

[00:06:22] And it specifically molded his choices as an artist. Yeah. So as for myself, I've been trying to read Liberté. And it's been really, really difficult. I've been trying to reread, actually, which is something that I'm really enjoying doing at the moment. I picked up a book I had read a few months ago called Parade by Rachel Cusk.

[00:06:47] And I was really interested in that book because all the characters, all the central characters, I would say, are called G. They're just a letter. She's very keen on modernist takes on literature and nouveau roman. And so she kind of produces these frameworks whereby she develops the narrative. And what really made me pick up the book was the fact that there's a character there, G, maybe short for genius,

[00:07:15] which is something that she obviously deconstructs. And G is a painter who makes paintings upside down. Ooh, reminds me of someone. Who could that be? And who has a very strange position about women as someone else that came to your mind, specifically Basilitz, who said that women couldn't be painters. So, of course, critics spotted that. And that book had a sort of echo in the contemporary art field.

[00:07:46] Going back to Onkawara, Liberté, we kind of touched upon this a little bit when you suggested doing an episode on him. But don't you find that he's kind of a monolith? And he's one of those few artists that I would never have thought of investigating. Because it's just taken, I think, by us spectators and even art professionals as an entity that is completely merged with the work. Don't you agree?

[00:08:15] Totally. I had the same feeling. Actually, Onkawara is a concept, his himself. Even his name was a mystery when I think about it. Was it his real name? What is his first name? Onkawara. And at the same time, I knew a lot about him because his work revolves around his daily life and activities.

[00:08:41] And you have a feeling of who he is, even if he's extremely elusive at the end of the day. You can show us what you've discovered about him. He's an artist. As I started reading, I realized that he really was not keen on having his biography out there. And he established a foundation during his lifetime. And the foundation has a website. It's called One Million Years Foundation.

[00:09:11] And when you click on his name, expecting to find the whole biography, you just have written on the screen, a sort of very minimal and empty screen, biography of Onkawara, 29,771 days.

[00:09:29] And then there is a photo of his studio in black and white, which is kind of midway between a bureaucratic setting and an artist studio with cupboards in the back, with very high and thin doors that suggest an incredible number of archives being kept behind them.

[00:09:57] So, someone who was very reluctant in being presented as a life and much more keen to turn their life into art or art into life. What would I do? Do I talk about his biography? Do I talk about the work?

[00:10:19] So, what I decided to do is perhaps to start with one of his last works and to honor this ethos, let's say, of the artist. And describe the work that he started in 1993 called One Million Years Past and Future. What do you think, Liberté? Do you think that's a good idea? Yes. And I think you would have liked that. Onkawara, if you're listening, this is for you.

[00:10:46] So, in 1970, 71, he started a folder listing a million years from 1960 down. Then, in 1980, in another folder, he listed a million years into the future. So, there's a gap between 71 and 1980. And in 1993, he joined those two works in the form of readings.

[00:11:14] So, two people read. One reads the odd numbers. The other one reads the other numbers. The odd numbers are read by a male-identifying person. And the other numbers are read by a female-identifying person. A non-binary person can choose one of the two. And these are performative works. So, they're read in front of an audience. They take a lot of time, obviously.

[00:11:40] And they have been performed all over the world. So, this is just to give you an idea of the type of materials that Onkawara was working with. So, notions as vast as time and space in some ways. And the conventionalities that come attached to those two concepts. So, dates, counting, lists, binders, and paintings.

[00:12:09] Because, obviously, we're talking about an exhibition that is paintings on the wall. So, basically, this is what we're talking about when we're talking about the work of Onkawara. With the project you just described, he's ongoing. It's still alive. He's not there. And he's going to carry on for many years.

[00:12:32] Because that one million year reading, backwards and forwards, will take a long time to put together. So, Onkawara biography. He was born in 1932 in Kariya, in a small town in Japan. And he died in New York in 2014. The major episode of his life was, obviously, the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings when he was 12 years old.

[00:13:02] And it kind of marked a rupture in his personality. He had been, up until then, a studious, young little boy. And from then onward, when he was in class and a teacher would ask him something, he would say, I don't understand. He was unyielding. And from that point onward, he felt like he didn't believe anything. So, the system of belief cracked within himself.

[00:13:30] If you compare to Yoko Ono, it's a completely different way of relating to the same horrendous episodes. So, Yoko Ono would devise menus with her brother lying on the ground in the countryside, looking at the clouds, and discover the empowering force of imagination. So, very different relationships with an event that would, in any way, have moulded your personality.

[00:13:57] And the way it did tells a lot about the disposition of the artist in question. Then, from what we understand, it really closed down. It kind of shut down with, I do not understand. And not wanted to move or engage in any way. So, that kind of places him outside of the realm of the discussed things because he doesn't understand them.

[00:14:22] So, he embraced a sort of nihilistic perspective on life in 1951. He moved to Tokyo. He met a number of artists in a bookshop where, for someone who didn't understand, he read quite voraciously. So, he devoured Freud's writings, Marx's writings, the existentialists, Sartre and Camus in particular. So, he was very well read.

[00:14:51] And because he stayed in the bookshop reading, he met a number of artists and became or started a practice as an artist. He started painting. In 1958, he moves to Mexico where he spends three years there. His father was the director of an engineering company. And so, he was very comfortably living there, going to art school, meeting all the intelligentsia. And he also started exploring Mexico.

[00:15:19] So, I think that was also the beginning of one of the aspects of Onkawara's biography, which is that he was a very keen traveler. And I think he said to Caspar Kearney, if I'm not mistaken, that if he hadn't been an artist, he would have been a travel agent. There you go. Perfect for him. Yeah. Anyway, he then went to Europe.

[00:15:46] He lived between New York and Paris at a certain point. A very important time before he settled in 1965 in New York was when he went to Spain, to Altamira, and he visited the caves. And so, that specific experience was incredibly powerful because that experience of art that remained in time.

[00:16:08] So, that form of presence of art and of drawings and paintings and the absence of the rituals around the cave kind of also had an impact on the way he would devise his works. And so, in 1965, when he finally settles in New York, he meets all the conceptualists. Obviously, he meets the minimalists.

[00:16:34] Obviously, he meets the minimalists.

[00:17:02] Rejecting painting in a lot of ways and embracing graphic expression, embracing language, embracing even bureaucratic practices in some ways. And also rejecting the systematic and the series.

[00:17:26] So, on Kawara found a like-minded group of people. And in 1966, he starts the works that we saw in the exhibition at David's Werner in London called the Date Paintings that he went on to make until 2012. So, until two years before his passing.

[00:17:53] So, Liberté, you are going to talk about the Date Paintings in the second part. We'll visit the exhibition together. When he goes to New York and really get into that group, he's 33 years old. And he's not a baby anymore. He's already done quite a lot. And that's really when he's blossoming. And I thought the age is quite important there too. But he has a long way to go.

[00:18:20] And also, it's important to say that he did paint, even when he was in Japan. He had these paintings that were very graphic, almost comics inspired about dire situations, lots of bodies in difficult and painful situations or isolated. After the Date Paintings, which bear the dates of the day when he makes them.

[00:18:46] So, he has 24 hours to produce a painting that states the date when it was made. So, of course, this resonates a lot with works at the time. Robert Smithson's Box with the Sound of Its Own Making comes to mind, obviously. And so many other works which are self-referential.

[00:19:10] But there's an existentialist take to Onkawara because this is also a performative act. He has to make the painting on that day. Obviously, this is a very rigid structure. So, there aren't paintings for each day. If you're wondering, dear listener, there's huge gaps. But apparently, he was able in the 70s to go three months, three whole months with making a painting each day.

[00:19:38] So, there are several dimensions for these paintings. Several letterings, several fonts and colors. But, Liberté, you will explain all of this in the second part of the episode and after the break. He decides to do a painting a day. But it is not... Some days, he doesn't do one because he can't. Some days, they are destroyed because he's not quick enough.

[00:20:06] Then he takes some breaks. There is some intermittence. It's continuity but intermittence. Again, you have always this double force in the work of Onkawara. And some days, he even does two a day. The same dates? Yeah. He repeats the same date? Yeah. Really? I didn't know that. You will remember when we go to the exhibition together. I can't wait.

[00:20:36] So, let's just go over the series of works he made. So, Onkawara was paradoxically a very prolific artist but had just a small number of series of works. And a lot of them were based on postcards. So, he started in 1968, two years after he started the date paintings, the series I Got Up.

[00:21:00] So, this series of works states simply the sentence I Got Up and the time when he got up. So, the hour and the minute. He started this series in Mexico knowing that Kasper Koenig, his friend, loved to receive postcards. And so, he sent two postcards a day for 12 years.

[00:21:25] And so, again, still no handwriting, only stamps. And the funny thing about this series is that Kasper Koenig says in an interview that this series stopped anecdotally because he was carrying, I think, in Finland, the briefcase where he kept his stamps for this series. And the briefcase was stolen. And so, that's why. And that's how.

[00:21:54] Most stamps are my postcards. Most stamps are my postcards. And that's how the series stopped. So, it's very interesting because there's a postcard. There's also an image in the back. And in some ways, the highly personal meets the blandest and most reduced form of expression of time and place. Because, of course, there's images. But those images are for tourists.

[00:22:19] So, they are the most neutral, the most conventional images you can have of a landscape or of a place. So, this series is also a bit trickier than the date paintings. But because it is more personal, you can track on Kawara's habits. And it's interesting that it shows the medium of postcards. Because today, who buys a postcard and who sends a postcard? We still do it, but it's a little bit of the time.

[00:22:48] And speaking of that, we even find telegrams in his work as well. The time. Because the I'm Still Alive series started with three telegrams sent in 1969. So, I'm Still Alive is the same idea than the I Got Up postcards. So, he would send postcards saying, I'm still alive.

[00:23:11] And so, he sent three telegrams saying, I am not going to commit suicide. Don't worry. So, that was the first one. The second one is, I am not going to commit suicide. Worry. Okay. And the third one is, I am going to sleep. Forget it.

[00:23:36] The third one kind of is the hinge upon which he then finds the final form of this series, which is saying, I'm still alive. The same thing with the date paintings. It destroyed most of them, but they were saying something. Something? The word something. Something. Just one word. And looking like the date painting. Monochrome background.

[00:24:02] Not many are left because it destroyed most of them, I think. So, there's this basis of a form of dread, a form of existential dread that very quickly is overturned by the bureaucratic keeping of time. And a sort of sense of humor as well. So, the I'm still alive I find absolutely hilarious. Because as soon... Receive such a postcard. Can you imagine?

[00:24:31] You'd be like, great. But is he? I think that's the question you ask yourself. Because then you think of the possibility of the opposite being also true after the postcard was made. No? Doesn't your mind go there? Yeah, absolutely. And it's very positive because I'm not going to commit suicide. It's a very passive aggressive, in a way, phrase. As I'm still alive is taking life with a positive twist.

[00:25:03] And in a way, there is a lot of humor. Because what do you reply to that? And it reassures you, even though you don't know if the person is still alive when you receive it a week after. I have a funny story about this series, which is about a couple of collectors. So, they started by collecting expressionistic German expressionist painting.

[00:25:28] And then slowly they turned towards conceptual art, minimalist art, process art. And they loved Onkawara. And they had one of the date paintings in their living room. And their friends mocked them endlessly because of their collection and couldn't understand why on earth they would collect postcards-based work, data-based work. They couldn't get it.

[00:25:54] And until one day, they were in a horrendous train accident. And so, the wife got away okay-ish. But the husband was between life and death for a while. And the funny and the interesting story within this story is that the wife was talking with one of their friends.

[00:26:21] He was calling to ask about the husband. And when they were chatting on the phone, the person said, you know what? I was thinking of the date paintings that you have in your living room and the artist that you told me about. And I never understood why you liked that work. And now that we are in the situation of thinking of losing the both of you, I finally understand the meaning.

[00:26:51] The news of Onkawara is very anchored in the day-to-day, quite mundane, a postcard from this and there. Just putting the date, it's quite funny. But at the end of the day, what else? I am still alive. This is the most important thing. That's what we want to know about our children, our loved ones. You are still alive. We are okay. And that's the genius of Onkawara.

[00:27:19] And I think he got to the same conclusion at the end of the 60s because that's the moment where he stopped talking about his art and stopped agreeing to talk about his art most of the time. And when he was questioned by a journalist, a student, an art critic about his work, he would send one of those postcards as a response. Really? Yes. Perfect. I'm going to try to do that too.

[00:27:50] So he started in 68 as well another series called I Went. So this is based on maps. So he photocopied maps to the size of an A4 sheet of paper that he then kept in a binder. And he just basically took a red felt pen and he traced the journey that he did by walking or any other form of transportation in that specific place.

[00:28:17] So always this relationship between time and place rather than time and space, as I said before, probably. There's finally the other series I met from 1968 to 1979 where he indexed to a day, a sheet of paper to a day. And on that sheet of paper, he would write the names of the people that he met on that day.

[00:28:44] And the genesis of this work is really funny because as a Japanese immigrant, he very often didn't understand the names of the people. But also as a traveler, as someone who most of the times were in countries where he didn't speak the language as well or didn't speak it at all. So he asked people to write down their names. And so he had, he found himself with papers with names of people on them.

[00:29:09] And he decided to make this series based on that sort of, again, conventional relationship with the self and with humanity and with experience, which is to know the name of the person you're talking to. Basically, the work is bureaucratic. It's mobile as well because he can make the work anywhere in the world, in his hotel room, for example.

[00:29:35] Even the paintings, they are, they travel really easily. And as you said, they have poor materials. The material is not what makes the preciousness of the work, let's say. Unless you recognize like you just did that time and space and place and experience are the most precious things you have. His paintings, his paintings, the date paintings, which he did everywhere.

[00:29:59] I don't think they know exactly in how many countries, but they counted more than 100 cities. And you can know by the language he's using. Then he's clearly worked in very many different places to do these paintings. I think him and the conceptualists really grasped, I think, something of the times.

[00:30:24] So in 1970, there was an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York called Information, curated by McShine. And it's interesting because the idea of information was in the exhibition related to photography. There was this notion that photography marked time and space. It was indexical. And the whole exhibition was about that. And we would talk about data nowadays, right?

[00:30:53] There was this consciousness of data. And because it was the first computers, the artists were starting to look at technologies as well and how those technologies in some ways recorded the recorded existence. And at the same time also recorded a huge absence of what the sign or the symbol can and cannot carry.

[00:31:22] So in the exhibition, there's a piece by Douglas Hubler called Location Piece, just to kind of illustrate the fact that Onkawara was certainly not the only artist thinking in terms of place, location, time and space. So Douglas Hubler collected newspaper photographs of local newspapers in several cities and several places in the United States.

[00:31:47] And he chose the photos that only had local interests and that reflected the space and the life of that space, of that particular place. And in his words, his work, quote, shifts the image away from objecthood, making the recipient the subject of the work, unquote, which could also be applied to Onkawara.

[00:32:11] But in some ways, there's also the stripping of subjecthood in Onkawara's work, I find. There's also kind of this nakedness of existence in the work of Onkawara. And that comes, this nakedness you feel, I think that comes from his great humanity.

[00:32:34] And as in all his projects and series, there is a tension and an opposition with, like you say, information. You know, that's why they did in that exhibition, they took mainly photographs, because this is reality. Photograph is what you see, opposite to something you create from your brain. And cuttings of newspaper is the reality of the day.

[00:33:01] And Onkawara uses that in the way he puts his painting in boxes with the cuttings of the day and the recording. And that's all very precise, very information or data, as you would say now. But Onkawara uses a very painstakingly method, which is very old-fashioned.

[00:33:32] He has his canvas, he will do the priming, and then the first layer, the second layers. And it's very handmade. And that creates a tension between, yes, the data, the conceptual, and the very human, the very artistic way. Again and again, you found that in all his series. I cannot wait to go into the exhibition space and visit or revisit the exhibition with you, Liberté.

[00:34:01] So shall we go for a small break? And when we come back... The exhibition. Yes, absolutely. Let's do that. See you in a bit. I didn't love it. Okay, so we're back after a short break.

[00:34:29] And we are about to be taken by the hand, by Liberté, into the exhibition. Great. Then let's push the door of the gallery and visit the exhibition. The exhibition was at David's Wearnold Gallery in Mayfair. The gallery is beautiful. It's in a spacious Georgian townhouse in the heart of Mayfair. Just to give you some context.

[00:34:56] The space is very elegant, with high ceilings, beautiful windows covered with white linens. It's restored to perfection. And I would say that it's one of the most successful contemporary space in London. Personally, my favourite. Because it has this white cube, but in an old townhouse. It's a great mix. And it's a perfect vessel for Onkarawa.

[00:35:24] It's wide, it's clean, and it's quiet. Then what we are going to see in the exhibition is some painting by Onkarawa. They are all coming, and that's important, they are all coming from the foundation, one million years. And they've never been seen on the market, and they are for sale. Which is quite incredible, isn't it? How do you go about buying?

[00:35:53] How do you go about pricing these works as well? I read an article stating that there's a specific date painting that went up. The price shot up, probably because two people with a personal relationship with that date were fighting for it. But what's really interesting is that in the anecdote I recounted earlier, one of the jokes that the friends would make when they would visit these collectors who had the date painting in the living room was, Oh, what is this? Is this your birthday?

[00:36:23] And they found it absolutely egregious. They thought, why would it be my birthday? But then I learned that some other people will go to the dates for a personal reason. So it is interesting how you enter this kind of work. But we're jumping the gun here. We're still not in the exhibit. We're still signing the book at the entrance. So, Liberté, go for it.

[00:36:49] I'm so curious to know how you feel in front of these paintings. So, I'm all ears. Well, first, you walk in the main room, which is on the ground floor. And what you see there is a lineup of five grey paintings dated on front, 1966, with the June, July, and then the day.

[00:37:17] And these five paintings, that's 66, is important because this is the year Onkar Rawah started his date paintings. And it's exactly on the 4th of January, 1966, that he did his first one. And then he will continue that idea or that series for the next five decades, as we said, until one year before he's there. And the last one recorded is on December 3rd, 2012.

[00:37:45] And it's number 1,933 in the series. We might be missing some. You know, it's not complete perfect science. Then when you walk in, they just want to show you, you know, where it starts. And that's really the cornerstone. And in that room, I don't know you, but for me, when I walked in, the first thing I was confronted with is, yes, you see these squares paintings,

[00:38:16] which are monochrome with the date. And I was like, how does that work? What's the system? What does that mean? And I think I was really getting into the nitty gritty of, they don't have the same colours. They don't have the same size. They are kind of the same, but the writing is not really the same. And then my brain was getting into, I want to understand. What are the rules? What is it doing?

[00:38:43] And that's kind of what happened to me downstairs. And working with you on the podcast, I got so many answers, which I will try to explain how he sets a rule and how that works. And for me, this is downstairs. How was it for you? Well, it's really well curated, isn't it? Because as you enter, you face a painting right away. So you face a date. And I felt a physical sensation.

[00:39:12] I felt a sort of slight punch in the stomach. There's something about them. Yeah. Then you had the emotion first. I did. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I have a specific relationship with time because in my kitchen, I have a small set of cubes and rectangles. Calendar. Yeah.

[00:39:39] It's a calendar, wood calendar that you have to manipulate yourself. So every morning I change one or two cubes or the rectangle below that states the month. It doesn't have the year. And I love doing that. It's the first thing I do in the morning. I go to the kitchen, have my breakfast, change the date. And I feel like I'm starting the day.

[00:40:04] I'm unlocking another level of the video game, if you will. And I love doing that. It's your ritual. It's my ritual. And when I leave on holiday, no one else does it in the house. So when I come back to the house, yeah, I'm frozen in time. So I don't know. Maybe that's it. You have this wooden thing because it's so obsolete in a way. You know, we all have phones. They update immediately.

[00:40:32] We have time everywhere. But who has a wooden calendar? And who makes paintings with dates when you have, at the time you started having electronic devices that would tell you the time? And you can even call. I don't know if you remember that. You could call a line that would tell you the exact time of the day. Do you remember that? Yeah. I do. I do.

[00:41:00] About the making of the paintings and how the whole project works. Please bear with me. It's a little bit technical, but not so much. But it's very interesting, I think, when you know, because that gives you a very different reading. Then when you walk in, you see all these paintings which are the same, but not quite the same. Because, of course, there is a date. But also they vary a little bit with colors, with everything. And then that gives a, it's not really a constant.

[00:41:30] That gives some variety to the work. Then the way he does it. Then a date painting is a monochromatic painting on canvas. He's using three colors only. Gray, red, and blue.

[00:41:46] And then when he's done the background, the monochromatic background, he will inscribe the date with Saint Cherif font of the day the painting was made. And the date is done with a ruler. He kind of calibrates it that it sits in the middle. And then he will paint it with white paint.

[00:42:12] If the painting is not finished by the end of the day, it will be destroyed. There will be no painting with the date of that day. With the colors, he makes them himself. He will mix them. Then the most common color is the gray, which is a very, very dark gray. Nearly on photos, he can look black. It looks black in photos, yes. And it was quite interesting when I met one of your friends who is an artist.

[00:42:40] We discussed, I said, oh, what did you see? And she said, oh, I love the colors. There was even one green. I was like, green? And then when we went back, it's this green. The third one on this 1966 is kind of a very dark khaki green. But actually, it's gray. And then I think it's just the way he mixed the paint and then maybe the light of the gallery. And she really saw it as green. But it is not green. But that gives you an idea of... There's a hue of green. Exactly.

[00:43:09] Because the thing that we discussed with the person who was there at the gallery at the time is that when you have three colors for your paintings, they will change. If you change brands, for example, if one of the brands discontinues the color you use, it's going to affect and it's going to... You're going to have slight variations of the colors. Yeah. And he's mixing the color every day. And don't forget, he's traveling.

[00:43:36] And in a way, it's a way of meditation, you know, because it will take a few hours to complete. Because in between, if you do layers, you do two layers of ground. Then you do the colors. You need the paint to dry in between. And that's... Then there is a real craftsmanship. And if you look at the painting very carefully, there is some little bubbles. There is some little corrections. They look very clean.

[00:44:03] There is a little accident which makes them very human. The canvases, they come in several sizes. There are eight possible sizes you can choose from on the day. They go from the small one, which is 8 to 10 inches. Or the very large one, which will be 61 by 89 inches. In the room, the 1966, there are medium-sized canvases.

[00:44:30] They are 26 by 24 inches, which is about 60, 70 centimeters by 90 centimeters. To give you an idea. And they're always 5 centimeters deep, which is 2 inch. Which gives, especially on the small one, I don't know if you've noticed. It gives an idea more of a box than of a painting. It's an object. Because I didn't understand why when I saw the exhibition.

[00:44:58] When I went back and I noticed the 5 centimeters, that is why it's just more physical than the usual canvases. Yes. Yeah. They have a real presence in space. Then this painting, he will build on the day. He will build a box, a cardboard box, where they go in when they are not exhibited. And the cardboard box, and that's where it gets very on Carawa and Serial.

[00:45:29] He's lined with the newspaper of the day. And then he will give a subtitle, which is generally taken from that newspaper, which he will write on the upper right corner. You follow? Yes. It's interesting because now I remember that when you were there, you asked why they weren't shown with the boxes.

[00:45:59] It's a curatorial choice. Here they wanted to keep a very clean look, I think. It's only about the painting. But the paintings are going with the box, which are going with the cutting and the subtitle. And, of course, this is all recorded in a book. Of course. If he moves to another country, he will be in the language of the country.

[00:46:23] And if it's not an English, no, if it's not a Latin alphabet based country, like his own country, Japan, who has a, you know, has a... Cardiographic, yeah. If you take the Arabic countries, the Hebrew language, then he will switch to Esperanto, which is invented language.

[00:46:52] Did he speak Esperanto? I don't think so. Who does it today? A few people. There's still, there is still an ongoing desire. Well, it does exist. It hasn't really taken off. I think it was bigger before than for the generation I was. Then the dates is ever-changing with the language.

[00:47:17] And he has always to write it in a way that it's very calibrated between the left and the right. Then there is a real kind of exercise of design, in a way, for each date. And he has chosen the English language as kind of a base, in the Latin alphabet. And then the first time he's using it is in 1963, with the painting, with the names.

[00:47:46] And then the painting is called something. And that's the first time he's using English. And that's very interesting as a Japanese person. That is, that's his choice. Also when you think of the history of Japan, the bombing and the American presence. And then suddenly he finds himself in New York, in a context that is so important to him in conceptual terms and in artistic terms. That's one of those ironies of history, I guess. Yeah.

[00:48:16] But that's an important key, I think, the choice of the language. And in that ground floor, you go in this kind of a side room where you have other paintings. And there we could find your favourite one. And it was your favourite because it says 20, space, ABR, in capital, dot 68.

[00:48:45] Then can you translate that for us and can you explain? So, so my personal relationship with that painting is that immediately I read it as 30 de abril 1960, which is my language, Portuguese, my mother tongue. And it's interesting because that's where my brain goes. But it actually was produced in Mexico, as far as I remember. And it's 30 de abril de 1970.

[00:49:14] So it's interesting because suddenly it kind of connects the history of those two languages, the differences between them. So they are linguistically very close. And at the same time, when you speak them, as I just did, they are so different. And I remember how excited you were like a kid because it's your language. They were great, that great. And made on the same day.

[00:49:41] Then that also shows you that some days it doesn't do it. Some days it does it. That the continuity and the exception, which I really like. And I think that comes with if it's your date or the date of someone you know and your colour and your language. And that's very personal. And that's where, from a very conceptual, dry project, you get something very, very personal. And I love seeing you kind of reacting to that. And then we did a selfie there. And I was like, OK, that's conceptual art.

[00:50:14] Back to the making of it. Then on the, this painting will go in a box. And then on the top, this box will be lined with the newspaper of the place it will be on. And he will choose what he calls a subtitle, which he will write at the top right corner in the box. And they are generally, the title is choosing either the main title of the day.

[00:50:41] Or they can be about the weather. It's generally about the news. Sometimes it's about him or his friends. Then he can also go in his personal life. It's rarer, I would say. Then I'll give you a few examples of the titles. Then one is 8 June 1966. Hurricane Alma has mounted to 100 miles an hour peak winds and is moving towards Cuba.

[00:51:10] 22 July 1966. Russian specialists have developed the first live vaccine against mumps. It can be either a long phrase. It can be two words. It can be two sentences. It really varies. And actually, there is a podcast. It's a couple. And they just read the titles and the dates. And it's very interesting because you are transported directly. They read the date and then the title.

[00:51:40] And then you're transported in the 60s. They are timeless, but they are of the day. And that's really reinforced by this cutting and this subtitle. But it's funny because you start seeing time as layered. And these layers and layers and layers of facts, feelings relating to those facts. And how some things kind of come to the surface again, like the hurricanes. And the war and the politics.

[00:52:10] When you hear this fun podcast, I found it funny. It's the same of the same in a way. And in 1972, in December, he's going to drop the subtitles. Do you know why, Joanna? No clue. Ah, okay. Then a little bit like the story with the stolen briefcase.

[00:52:33] In 1972, on Carrawa was an artist in residence in the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. And at the time, there was some bombing in Vietnam by the Americans. And that was related in the newspaper. And apparently, he did some cutout of this major event. and one had the title Bomb Terror Hanoi

[00:53:01] which he put in a folder and he wrote above that cutting Jag vet inte which translates from Swedish I do not know and this is the subtitle of 28th December 1972 I do not know in Swedish and from the 29th December 1972

[00:53:30] the subtitles are just the day of the week Friday and then Saturday and Sunday and that's from 72 no more funny subtitles it kind of shrink again and that really reminds me of the story you told us about when he was young I don't understand I do not know frozen in time he's just blocking it he doesn't want to interpret it

[00:53:59] it's this is then the subtitle are giving a big clue here it's funny because it's making me think of the rawness of trauma with that generation you lived horrendous things you went through horrible hardships but there's it's that generation the pre-boomers almost because he was born before the second world war you recompose your personality

[00:54:28] you readjust and you keep on going and that's there's something really striking about that this reduction of your experience to a date and at the same time this death of your experience with the date as well there's this idea of death the dates

[00:54:58] always made me think of the idea of dying every day and being born every day and there's something to it that I find very positive and then there's something which is akin to trauma and also the positive and the negative aspects of trauma as well that kind of trauma connects you to a raw existential almost delirious joy of being alive

[00:55:27] and at the same time it reminds you constantly of the possibilities of hardship and death there's there's something really puzzling and hard to put into words in the work really and you said he put it away but in a way he didn't because he became an artist and it's the whole his whole life is dedicated to overcome that trauma

[00:55:57] and making something of it he's closing down on the words he doesn't want to explain but he does a painting a day and that's his meditation this is a turning the calendar he's very positive he's restarting every day no matter what but are you the one who is positive we don't know if he was or not you liberty are a very positive person possibly but you need a little

[00:56:26] light every morning to start a new painting every day there's something about dislocating the ego in art practices at the time and taking yourself out of the picture and I realized that when I see one of those paintings I immediately think of him and so you do think of the craft and you do think of the patience and you do think of the meditation and you do think of this idea of keeping time while

[00:56:55] laughing in its face it's this idea of containing within a very simple gesture a sort of absurdity of or contradictory or paradoxical aspects of a moment in time and so it is quite traditional in terms of philosophy and very innovative at the same time like the Altamira caves but I suggest now that we

[00:57:25] go on the second floor we're still see imagine if we had talked in the exhibition we're so chatty let's go to the second floor and wrap it up the beautiful Zwerna gallery they have this fantastic restored staircase which is really staircase to heaven and that brings you on the main most beautiful floor which is the second floor where there

[00:57:55] for me it was a complete different emotional story when I walk in and same one long room and one room on the side you walk in and there is a whole wall with a painting area which means 10 paintings now I got the system then 1970 then 1971 then 1972 1973 1974

[00:58:25] and 1979 then you move on the side and there is a large blue painting which is very beautiful 1982 and just on the side room where you can slide to there is another painting 1971 then on the next wall 2000 and finally 2006 and for me there I was totally hit it was like the ruthlessness of time every

[00:58:55] you realize it just never stops it's like a rabbit hole it just goes on and on and on and for me the last painting when I looked at 2006 I just saw my death I was like that's it and my reaction was to rush back and just say what's important what do I have to do today who am I just like really and he

[00:59:25] was so emotional and I was like this guy is a genius I know you hate the word genius but it was from something quite technical on the first road to a very very meaningful deep and emotional reaction which really made me question myself and for that I'm so grateful to Onkarawa what about you well it's funny because I had more of an impact downstairs and the second floor

[01:00:05] I think maybe the impact was also you're looking at a time right before you were 10 years before I was born and rather than bearing an image to connect with you to tell you a

[01:00:35] more impactful downstairs because the calendar sense of things pages of a calendar being leafed through doesn't give me the same impact in a sense how different we are on that reaction yeah look at what people buy of course you know if you have the big painting the colourful will have a premium I guess but the other

[01:01:05] thing which come in big prices is when you buy them in groups as a decade so funny and it's funny that you are buying chunks of time yes you are I just wanted to give a little anecdote about the whole meaning of the exhibition when I was waiting for you on the bench I have a very civilised bench downstairs at the Zwerna which is in between places

[01:01:35] there was a visitor who asked a reception he said is that it is there anything else to see I was like who else do you want and I was in that kind of trance about meaning of life and when the person says anything else then I leave you on that note but that's beautiful is there anything else Liberté thank you so much

[01:02:05] for doing this first episode as a co-host it has been wonderful and I hope you come back thank you and thank you for listening bye bye