BREAKING ON
intro
The book ON KAWARA: SILENCE, gives an overview of On Kawara's work on cyphers. In her short essay, Anne Wheeler tells us that eight Code drawings exist today. She was writing in 2014 after having been in talks with On Kawara close to the end of his life, but it now seems there were nine Code drawings. In any case, it's clear that Kawara didn't tell anyone the keys to any of the codes. When I started to consider these, none of them were cracked, as far as I was aware. Thanks to the help of a couple of Swedish correspondents, Anders Delbom and Tommy Wrede, most of them are deciphered as of June 2024. In other words, this section actually gets somewhere that no-one else has got to before. Read on, dear ground-breaking reader.
First, let me describe and date the nine codes.
The first type consists of pairs of coloured strokes, of which there are four.
1) Code or Colored Cryptogram. Six pages of which the following is page one. It is incorrectly named as 'Love Letter' in On Kawara: Silence.
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
2) Traveler's Song (1965). Two pages of which the following is page one:
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
3) Love Letters (1965) Six pages (plus a title page) of which the following is page three. Note that it has thirteen lines per page as does the first Code. This may be a reason that the first Code has been (I think) incorrectly named as Love Letter in On Kawara: Silence.
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
4) Voice from Moon (2011) Nine pages of which the following is page one.
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
Note the dates of production: 1965, 1965, 1965 and 2011. Three of the codes were made in the year before On Kawara began the Today series of Date Paintings. And the fourth was made nearly fifty years later. But as we'll see, the 2011 code was a fairly straightforward disguising of the Moon Landing transcript of 1969. An invigilator of the SILENCE show at the Guggenheim cracked this, the simplest of the codes, but I didn't know that when I independently worked it out in 2022. That story is told on the next page.
What Anne Wheeler says about this first category of codes is as follows: '(They) consist of short coloured-pencil strokes furrowing across the page. The format is that of a Western text, as is the American-style punctuation; yet the codes apparent logic and recognisable features only heighten the distance between artist and viewer. Though Kawara eventually revealed that the text of the first Code is an encryption of a model love letter from a writing manual, even that clue provides little insight into the significance of the content of the text, or into the work overall.'
Now I've produced a detailed page about the solving of each of these four codes (one is incomplete). No doubt the stories could be told in a quicker way, cutting to the chase. But I believe you have to understand the joy of solving the code in order to truly appreciate how much thought went into the making of it. These are essays to savour. Love Letters and Traveler's Song are explored in subsequent pages.
Two other codes consist of very large and very small numbers typed out across multiple pages. About these, Wheeler states: 'These sequences are difficult to grasp as numbers in themselves, let alone as presumably meaningful ciphers.' The word 'presumably' means that at the time of writing, Anne Wheeler did not know what the messages said. Well, we can all know now. See, Anders Delbom, Tommy Wrede and I taking a bow. And see Anders and I stand aside as Tommy takes a second bow on his own. This guy is an outstanding puzzle-solver!
The titles of the codes in this second category are:
5) Eight quintillion… (the full title actually goes on for several lines, see below) (1969). The work itself consists of twelve paragraphs of written out numbers over five pages.
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
Now, after an unbelievable amount of work and intuition and close attention, it can be said that code 5) 'simply' reconstructs a humorous, politically edgy double-page in the July 1969 edition of MAD Magazine. On Kawara once dropped a clue to that effect when being interviewed by Ursula Meyer in 1971. And anyone wanting to crack that code would absolutely need this information. Read the whole story here. Detective work of a fine order.
6) Untitled (1995). 
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
This piece spreads over the cover of an important book, On Kawara: Whole and Parts. Then it spreads over the inside front cover, then across six pages of the 700-page book, then the last six pages of the book and the inside back cover and finally the back cover. As deadpan a work of art as you could hope to meet in a lifetime. Did no-one ever wonder what it was about?
This Code 6) uses the same cypher (number = letter of the alphabet) as comes from the above Code 5) in order to turn the series of very large and very small numbers which cover so much of On Kawara: Whole and Parts into the Moon Landing transcript. Once you've cracked the code, you realise it's the incredibly excited and exciting words that passed between ground control on Earth and the first human beings to walk on the Moon.
On Kawara is rightly famous for, in real time, having made a triptych of Date Paintings to celebrate the Moon Landing. Nothing could be simpler than those July 1969 Dates made large. But nothing could be more complicated than this coded work that he did, decades later, in order to achieve a different kind of tribute. A celebration of what man achieved in first landing on the Moon and then talking to the people back on Earth about the experience.
It's those first five codes that I've done a tremendous amount of work on, with the help of razor-sharp Anders Delbom and puzzle-pummeling Tommy Wrede. The essays that I intend to collect together into the next few pages of this site.
The remaining Codes can be dealt with fairly quickly and right here on this page.
7) Six sens (1995), This consists of title page and five braille-marked pages of which this is the first:
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
As Anne Wheeler says 'In 1995 Kawara created an edition box of three Codes that contained screen-printed reproductions of the 1965 Code [which I'll refer to from now on as Love Letters] and Eight quintillion… as well as Six Sens.' In other words, the artist's box contained Codes 1), 5) and 7) from the above list. But Six Sens is not that interesting from a code-breaking perspective. It is 'simply' a braille translation of the poem 'Six codes du temps' by the French poet Jacques Roubaud. If one has functioning eyesight, there is no need to attempt to read the braille with the end of one's index finger. One can simply read the poem (translated from French into English, if required) by Jacques Roubaud. It's a sensitive piece of writing, full of repetition, reminding me of themes and styles found in Samuel Beckett's short prose, much given to philosophical perspectives re death and time.
8) and 9). Both 1979. How to describe these? Over to Anne Wheeler: 'Each features mirror-image pictographic drawings of a turtle, a bee, and a spider inside a hexagonal shape. One appeared on either side of a page of the exhibition catalogue for Kawara's first survey show at Stockholm's Modern Musee in 1980.' She then talks about a poster that came out the same year, but I think that is the same image. So as far as I'm aware Codes 8) and 9) are just Code 8). Here is the poster:
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
The clearer example of the Code (if it is a code) can be found in the extremely important book, On Kawara: continuity/discontinuity. Important because it contains the entire set of annual Journals from 1966 to 1979, listing and describing every single Date Painting made in that period.
Let's take this slowly in case the exact context helps with the decoding. Here is the cover which shows a detail from the 100 Years Calendar. In other words, it shows years in the Twentieth Century before On Kawara was born, years when he was alive (yellow dots), and years when he was Date Painting (blue and red dots).
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
Opening the book, the end pages show photos of six studios in which he worked between 1966 and 1979. Then you turn over and this is the right-hand page, the left-hand page being blank.
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
Turning the sheet, and looking at it again, one sees almost the same thing. See below. In fact you are looking at the same thing but from the other side. In other words its the same tortoise in the same place that ends up looking the other way when you consider the single sheet of paper from the other side: 
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
However, the words at the bottom of the page are not identical. The right-hand page says:
'Difference between sameness and difference is same'
Turn over, and what is now the left-hand page says at its foot:
'Sameness between difference and sameness is different'
So what is going on? The hexagonal shape may be referring to DNA. A tortoise shares 90% of its DNA with a human. A spider shares 63% and a bee shares 44%. Difference between sameness and difference is same? Or sameness between difference and sameness is different?
That sameness/difference business surely applies to Date Paintings. Are they effectively the same or different. It depends from what angle one considers the Date Painting. Using examples, is JUNE 23, 1966 the same or different from NOV. 11, 1972? Difference between sameness and difference is same? Or sameness between difference and sameness is different? One has to go back 300 million years for a common ancestor of both the human and the tortoise. One has to go back 600 million years to find a common ancestor to both man and bee. Difference between sameness and difference is same? Or sameness between difference and sameness is different?
I don't know what the 11 degrees refers to. It could be something biological about the way the hexagons are attached to each other? I don't know but I bet it's something specific. Over to Anders Delbom and Tommy Wrede?
Meanwhile, I am putting together the next few essays. Which means pulling them from the 'GAME ON' section or elsewhere, and writing up Love Letters for the first time, Tommy Wrede and Anders Delbom having decoded that most difficult code a couple of months ago.
