Artists on On Kawara (Artists on Artists Lecture)

Artists from Renée Green to Haim Steinbach explore themes of temporality and absurdity in the work of On Kawara
This is the sixth volume in a series that builds upon Dia Art Foundation’s Artists on Artists lectures. The contributors to this book explore the practice of On Kawara (1932–2014) from various points of entry: Alejandro Cesarco uses a self-reflexive approach to the ideas of artistic legacy, influence and work; Nancy Davenport contends with innocence and trauma in two of Kawara’s most influential series; Renée Green weaves a poetic relationship between the work of Chantal Akerman and Kawara; Annette Lawrence provides a close reading of the Today series and her own journals, grappling with what it means to keep time; Scott Lyall considers the experience and contingency of time, differentiating between thinking with and speaking about a work of art; Dave McKenzie stages a diaristic correspondence with Kawara; Bettina Pousttchi reflects on duration in art and the history of time keeping; and Haim Steinbach plays with Beckettian abstraction, absurdity and repetition.