On Kawara
On Kawara
(1933, Kariya, Japan– 2014, New York)
LAT. 31°25’N, LONG. 8°41’E.
1965
Acrylic on canvas, 83.5×96.3×5.3 cm
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
This is one of the most enigmatic paintings by artist On Kawara, the only one of its kind containing geographical coordinates. Tracking it on the map will lead us to the middle of the desert in Algeria, a location we might call a non-place. From the Google satellite view, it’s a sand dune like any other. In order to speculate on the painting’s meaning, however, it might be helpful to consider the equally unique triptych Title, made by the artist in the same year (1965), the year when America bombed Vietnam. Kawara was living in the USA at that point and, like everyone else, could only get news about the situation through the newspapers. As a result, for many, Vietnam became a place to be transported to through mental images and the imagination. It may well be that LAT. 31°25’N, LONG. 8°41’E is a picture of a state of mind, a mind that is constantly cracking coordinate codes and making leaps to unknown destinations: whether Vietnam or a desert is perhaps beside the point.
It seems logical that a year later Kawara would begin his most well-known series, Date Paintings, which explore time and temporality, the second element in the space-time continuum theory of the universe, and all of the large, existential questions in which the artist was interested (as we can judge by the texts he included in his catalogues). It also seems natural that many of his works prior to LAT. 31°25’N, LONG. 8°41’E were concerned with codes and, more generally, with the inefficacy of language. Nevertheless, by using and studying that same language he was essentially studying the most elusive element of the space-time continuum, human consciousness.
SK