On Kawara is one awesome artist.

His on-going project of date paintings are a record of time and life but it uses nothing personal. One morning he wakes up and says, “today I will paint.” He proceeds to paint the date of the current day. If he doesn’t finish it by the end of the day then he throws the painting away. These paintings record his life without involving his life- it only has the date. There is no element of the day- just the date.

The paintings weren’t all the same either. Some were painted in red and if he was in a different country that wrote the date differently than what we are accustomed to, he would write the date in their form. Most of these were made in the late 60’s and early 70’s and show how art no longer depended on being visual. Which is like a “Woah, how can art not be visual?” kind-of-thing. It’s something simply about vision and you look at how something becomes visual. Deep stuff.