GIANT ON: 1978
A full nine years after On Kawara had commemorated the Apollo 11 mission with three size 'H' Dates, he was at it again. This time it is not obvious why he upped the scale. Though I have a theory that may explain much of what was going on.
In the 2008 installation in Dallas, the Dates that face each other across a corridor are OCT.31, 1978 and NOV.13, 1978. But at the time of their execution there was another huge Date, OCT.29, 1978, and after much consideration I suspect it was that badly damaged and subsequently destroyed painting that was of most significance.
But before I explain why I think that, let me introduce you to the three Dates in question. Below is the only photo available of the OCT. 29 Date. It was shown together with some other Dates at Rüdiger Schöttle's venue in Munich, in spring of the following year, 1979. 
Courtesy of Rüdiger Schöttle.
Also in that show seem to have been: APR.8,1978 ( size 'C'), MAY 31, 1978 (size 'C') and SEPT. 6, 1978 (size 'D'). There is no list of Dates in the show but there are photos. Rüdiger has told me that On Kawara was alone responsible for the choice of Dates and that he didn't discuss his choice with the gallery. Autonomous On.
Present also was another of the size 'H' Dates, NOV. 13, 1978. 
Courtesy of Rüdiger Schöttle.
Rüdiger Schöttle has assured me that only two large Dates were in that show. Which means that OCT. 31, 1978 probably stayed in New York until it was bought early in 1980 by the Art Institute of Chicago. 
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
Three size 'H' Dates made in autumn of 1978. At this time, Kawara was still making 'I GOT UP', 'I WENT' and 'I MET'. And of course, every time he made a Date Painting he added pages to his 'I READ' file. Do we learn anything in this context from those? The 'I GOT UP' postcards tell us that On got up at 10.24 A.M., 10.26 A.M. and 10.17 A.M.. He wasn't in any rush to get the most daylight out of each size 'H' day, then.
Actually, he didn't leave his flat, which by this time was a sixth floor loft that he and Hiroko had bought (on Nobu Fukui's advice) at 140 Greene Street. I mean, 'I WENT' tells us that he didn't leave his flat on any of the three days. And he met only Hiroko and Akito (his six-month old son) on the three days in question. Plus a single (different) neighbour on day two and day three. These 'meetings' may have gone something like this:
George Lambrou (OCT. 31, 1978): "My God, On. That is magnificent. Sorry to interrupt, I'll make my own way out."
Ann Usai: (NOV. 13, 1978): "I will just get on with my work as usual, Mr Kawara. I will be as quiet as a mouse."
The 'I READ' page or pages for each day include a variety of clippings about all sorts of things. Here are the pages for October 29:
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation.
Old wine goes for $1500 dollars a sip eh? I imagine that's what I'll be drinking throughout the evening I'm invited round to enjoy a private showing of whichever of the size 'H' Dates is owned by a European collector with a sense of humour and an ounce of philanthropy flowing through their veins.
But the variety of the newspaper clippings shown on the verso page is in complete contrast to the July 1969 Date Painting 'I READ' pages, where the focus is exclusively on the moon mission.
Three 1978 Dates and only the first one is truly significant, is, I say again, what I'm going to suggest.
So why three? Well, having three huge canvases on hand for the Apollo mission in 1969 had worked out very well for the artist. So Kawara may have made/ordered two in reserve that he could choose to paint as and when he liked. The idea of including two in the German show may have come up. And his dealer in New York at the time was Angela Westwater, who may have pleaded with her artist for at least one huge canvas. It had been prior to Kawara's first show at Fischer Sperone Westwater at 142 Greene Street in 1975 that Kawara had reverted to painting relatively large size 'D' dates, after a couple of years concentrating on size 'A' and 'B' only. Maybe Angela was always urging On to think and paint BIG. "Think of those massive Manhattan lofts and up the ante, On. I can charge a lot more for a large Date than a tiddler." Would she have said 'tiddler' or 'nipper'? I can't be sure.
Obviously, that is all glib guesswork, and I doubt if Kawara was much influenced by what any gallerist said. (Though he would certainly have listened to any advice Kasper König had for him.). So let's cut to the chase and explain why I strongly suspect On Kawara may have been highly motivated to paint OCT. 29, 1978 at size 'H'.
October 29 was the last Sunday in October, and although presently the clocks in America go back on the first Sunday in November, back then it was the last Sunday in October.
The clocks also go back at this time in the UK. And each year, at the end of October, I resent the loss of an hour's light at a time of day when I find it useful. Late afternoon is often when I have my hour's walk. Whereas the extra hour's light in the morning is no good to me, as I'm still asleep.
So I'm wondering if On Kawara found himself annoyed at losing an hour of daylight in the afternoon despite the gaining of an hour's light in the morning when he was, by and large, still asleep in bed at 140 Greene Street, Manhattan. Hypothetical telegram: 'I AM STILL ABED.'
Secondly, the putting back of the clock is something that emphasises how artificial the whole 'time' thing is. The government pulls a lever and the time changes by an hour. How contrived! And it would have seemed particularly strange to a Date Painter. And so it seems that On Kawara resolved to make a huge Date Painting on the day that he was given an extra hour to do so. And in the process, perhaps he would have felt time itself jolt as he painted.
Thirdly, Japan did not have a tradition of altering the clocks for 'daylight summer time'. So when On Kawara was growing up in Kariya he would not have had to come to terms with this artificial event. Time flowed as it should do. Light and dark varied predictably as the seasons did.
So let's look at the time changes in 1978 to illustrate the differences between light/time in Tokyo (same time zone as Kariya) compared with New York:
Note, firstly, that sunrise in Japan is very early in the summer. And correspondingly sunset is early too. The sun sets at seven pm on the summer solstice! Maybe that partly explains (all night mah-jong sessions and chess matches were further reasons) why On Kawara's waking hours were so inconsistent. 'I GOT UP' reveals some very odd getting up times. Some incredibly late getting up times!
Note, secondly, that while things just get darker for longer through October and November in Japan, there is the jolt in New York, due to putting the clocks back. Panic stations as thousands of Americans say to their loved ones: "Am I late or early for work?"
By the time one gets to the winter solstice, there is not that much difference between New York and Japan. Both places are in the northern hemisphere, though Tokyo is nearer the equator than New York, which has a slightly shorter winter day.
But get this. From 1948 to 1952, Japan observed daylight saving time (DST) between May and September every year. The United States imposed this policy as part of the Allied occupation of Japan.
In other words, when On Kawara was 15, three years after the hydrogen bombs had fallen on his countrymen, the American nation that had dropped these bombs decreed that the clocks go forward in spring and back in autumn, creating a previously unknown glitch in time. Christ, could these aliens do anything?
And although that had only lasted for four of his teenage years, later in life he settled in New York and had to come to terms with 'daylight saving time' for the second time in his life.
So all in all, I can imagine that putting the clocks back by one hour at 2am on Sunday morning of the last Sunday in October, was always an event in On Kawara's personal calendar as long as he lived in New York. It gave him an extra hour to make a Date Painting on that day. Yes, 25 hours available instead of 24. How exciting was that? Or even, how demoralising, to be reminded that the whole fabric of time was an invention of man, whose 'time' was calculated by watching the planet earth go round the sun in a 'year', while, simultaneously, the earth rotated on its own axis in a 'day'. And that's it. Except for the US authorities just giving time a tweak as summer became winter, so that the remaining daylight hours fell at a slightly more inconvenient time, in the morning rather than the evening. Always remembering to reverse the tweak in spring so that 'time' was still dictated by the movement of the sun and the earth.
But hold on, I can test this out. The Sunday in question migrated between October 25 and 31 over the years from 1966 to 2000. So let's map this out (black dots) and add the occasions that On Kawara made a Date Painting (pink circles).
It looks to me that On Kawara avoided making a Date Painting on the Sunday that clocks went back, at least for the first two years. And in total there are only five such Date Paintings when one would expect approximately eight given that the artist made 55 Date Paintings in the entire October 25 to October 31 period which comes to 245 days in all. (55/245 = 0.224. 0.224 x 35 = 7.84)
However, On had painted a size 'A' Date on October 30 (clock day) of the previous year, 1977. Which may have meant that he was beginning to get his head around this outrageous thing that happened to time in America every autumn.
Maybe On Kawara was still celebrating the clocks going back an hour and aligning with Japanese time two days later when he painted OCT. 31, 1978. And maybe he still had that on his mind when he painted NOV. 13, 1978. The Clocks Going Back triptych! But if so, why not exhibit all three paintings in Munich. And if he and/or Angela Westwater only wanted two of the three to go to Europe, then why not keep the special one, OCT. 29, 1978, safe in New York?
Courtesy of Rüdiger Schöttle.
Very strange about this painting being so badly damaged that it had to be destroyed. (Thanks to Michael Wynne for providing this perspective.) Was it damaged while travelling from Rüdiger Schöttle's gallery to its new owner's place, or back to New York if the painting hadn't been sold? Was it damaged by a gallery visitor or its new owner or what? I will try asking Rüdiger Schöttle who I first asked about this painting back in 2021. Let's hope he is a time-rich man. But having known On Kawara, why wouldn't he be?
NOV. 22, 2025 How time stands still. Not.
Next essay.
