My daughter, Ariel, and I went to the Guggenheim Museum this weekend to see the exhibition, On Kawara- Silence.
On Kawara’s work is a reflective meditation about the passage of time. He has a few bodies of work that are daily repetitions of the same theme. He had a daily ritual since 1964: he produced the same painting every day for decades. As he traveled the world, he painted the date in white paint on black, gray, red, or blue canvas. He also wrote the date in the same white font using the language of his location. He titled this work, the Today series.
On Kawara also collected a few newspaper clippings from each day and called this work the I Read series. Another body of work is the I Got Up series, where On Kawara sent postcards to friends from different places in the world. Every postcard said, I Got Up, and on each was recorded the time when he woke up. I had taken only a few photos in the exhibition before I was told that photography is not allowed. There are many other things in the exhibition that are fascinating. For all of you who are fans of conceptual art, this is a great show.
We also saw another much smaller show in the museum by an Iranian artist. Her name is Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, and she made geometric sculptures that are covered with mirrors. I recognized a familiar Middle Eastern aesthetic in her work that I like a lot. This exhibition is titled Infinite Possibility: Mirror Works and Drawings, 1974-2014. It includes plaster and mirror reliefs (large-scale mirror sculptures) and works on paper.
Also, last week there was a terrible fire in New York. My husband was sitting in Virage on Second Ave and 7th Street, and he witnessed the whole tragedy unfold. These are photos he took. The last two photos are of the rubble from the day after the fire.
