NARRATOR:

We see that this painting refers to a very specific date, March 16, 1993. It’s part of a long series that On Kawara started in the mid-Sixties and continues to this day of paintings that were made on particular days and recorded with those dates.

GARY GARRELS:

His practice was to paint a painting in one day, the day of the date. And it’s painted by hand. It looks like it’s detached, but in fact it’s not. And that idea of capturing that presence of being in the moment at the time is really distilled in this object.

PETER SAMIS:

Each painting comes in a box. The lining of the box shows a newspaper page from the city that On Kawara was in. March 16, 1993, was the date that the obituary for John Caldwell came out in The New York Times. John was curator of painting and sculpture here at SFMOMA from 1989 to 1993. And there was an exhibition of On Kawara’s date paintings on view at the time of his passing. So this painting was a gift of the artist after John Caldwell died.

GARRELS:

It’s a testament to being in the world at the moment, declaring that “I am alive,” celebrating that in some way.