On Kawara

Born in Kariya, Japan in 1933, he left Japan in 1959 and settled in New York from 1965, living in deliberate anonymity and rarely allowing himself to be photographed. From January 1966 until his death in 2014, he produced the Today series—nearly 3,000 monochromatic date paintings made in over 112 cities, each bearing only the date of its completion. His strict self-imposed rule required each canvas be finished within a single day or destroyed. The series is among the most sustained and rigorous bodies of work in conceptual art.