CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/27/2015

On Kawara — Silence

In the Guggenheim's definitive catalogue for the current, critically acclaimed On Kawara retrospective, Anne Wheeler writes, "In 1965, following abandoned sculptural experiments in his new studio at 401 East Thirteenth Street in New York, Kawara returned swiftly and definitively to painting. Confronting
 the expansive space, the artist began working on a group of monochrome canvases in various sizes that deepened his explorations of language. Some works featured messages coded in systems of Kawara’s own invention: geometric shapes, circles, and rectangles on an implied grid that, according to the artist, no one was ever able to decipher. Others bore simple English words such as ART, MOONSTONE, CIPHER, and UNTITLED, or epigrammatic phrases like GO HOME AND CRY ON YOUR PILLOW.
 Kawara ultimately destroyed most of these paintings." Featured image, of these untitled paintings in the artist's studio, 1965, is reproduced from On Kawara - Silence.