by Carlos Moreno - Oct 19, 2024.
During my time in kindergarten and elementary school, it was a regular practice for us to draw and share our weekend experiences every Monday morning. We would display our drawings on the classroom wall each week, replacing the previous week's artwork. This allowed us to see and share the adventures we had while not at school with our friends. It was a way for us to express ourselves and for our teachers to understand our emotions. Our classroom walls served as our first art gallery, filled with drawings of various things like clouds, cars, houses, tornados, dinosaurs, and volcanoes.
Starting from 1988, the Japanese artist On Kawara displayed seven of his "Today Paintings" in kindergarten classrooms. These paintings consist of hand-painted boxes containing newspapers from the day the artist created them, with the date shown on the outside. Kawara created these paintings in different languages based on the country he was living in, using them to document his life as part of his artistic approach to art, time, and life. Kawara saw all of his different series as reflections of a larger performance and way of living that lasted his whole life.
Between 1966 and 2013, On Kawara produced his "Today Paintings" as simple time capsules of his daily experiences. Alongside these paintings, Kawara also worked with other media, such as postcards sent to friends explaining at what time he woke up, or maps showing the route he took in a single day. The ambiguity of dates, some important in historical context and others relevant only from a personal perspective, is central to Kawara’s artistic conception.
For his installation “Pure Consciousness,” Kawara chose to exhibit seven of his "Today Paintings" in different kindergarten classes, dated from January 1st to January 7th of 1997. Since 1998, the installation has been displayed in twenty-six locations worldwide, from Bhutan to Japan. As part of his instructions, Kawara was interested in exposing young children to his artwork without any explanation or artistic context, integrating his work with the classroom environment. The conceptual paintings were hung among cabinets, tables, and educational decorations, allowing the children to encounter art in a pure and unfiltered way, free from artistic associations and prejudices.
Once an artwork is created, the artist has minimal influence on how it is perceived, and the artifacts take on a life of their own. However, with “Pure Consciousness,” On Kawara aimed to ensure that the youngest possible audience was exposed to his art from early childhood. Despite potential skepticism from adults regarding the artistic language or concept used by the artist, Kawara attempted to blur the boundaries between life and art by displaying his artwork in the primary educational and social setting.
Images sourced from the publication PURE CONSCIOUSNESS 1998-2013