On Kawara, "Date Painting(s) in New York & 136 Other Cities"

For nearly half a century, time has been the subject of On Kawara’s “Date” compositions, whose simplicity belies the discipline involved in making them. The artist always starts and finishes a piece in the same day, and the results are minimal in the extreme: just the date painted usually in white against a dark color. The back of the canvas, meanwhile, is lined with the front page of the newspaper from whatever city he happens to be in at that moment. This show brings together the artist’s work in a museum-quality career survey that sprawls through all three Zwirner spaces.