On Kawara (河原温) was a Japanese conceptual artist who worked primarily in the United States. He was born on December 24, 1932 (Christmas Eve) in Kariya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, and is known to have passed away on July 10, 2014, in New York City. He fiercely guarded his privacy—only two photographs of him are publicly known to exist.
His signature series Today began on January 4, 1966, in New York. The work follows a strict set of creative constraints. Each painting consists solely of the date it was made, rendered in white on a monochrome background using the Gregorian calendar. The canvas sizes range roughly from 20×25 cm to 155×226 cm, maintaining a height of about 4 cm. The color of the day—often black or dark gray, but sometimes cerulean, forest green, orange, or red—is carefully mixed with Liquitex paint and evenly applied to the front and sides of a prepared canvas in up to five layers. Once dry, the date is hand-painted in Futura or Gill Sans, up to seven times.
He made up to three paintings per day, and if a work wasn’t completed by midnight, it was destroyed. Most of them were made while traveling. Each painting was housed in a cardboard box lined with newspaper from the city where it was painted—an effort to encapsulate a specific time and place. In the early years, the newspaper was even pasted to the back of the canvas. The repetition and rigor were not for aesthetics, but to trap time itself.
In a parallel universe where Mr. Kawara is still alive, you’ve just been appointed as his assistant. The aging artist can no longer mix paint or lift a brush. From time to time, he murmurs in clumsy Korean, something like “Min Guhong Manufacturing…”—nobody really knows what he means.
As his assistant, your job is to continue the Today series, at least until the day he truly passes away. But you’re not really interested in Mr. Kawara, his life, or even his work. You’d rather browse Min Guhong Manufacturing, or enjoy a slice of organic cherry pie with a cup of coffee. Still, an appointment is an appointment. Somewhere between duty and desire, you begin to wonder: Can I build a one-page website that automatically generates a new Today piece every day? You’ve recently been fascinated by the idea of imposing a new order on things using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—the basic and foundational languages of the web.
Following the spirit of New Order, you made a list of the key components that define the Today series. It boils down to:
- Today Series
- Today’s date
- Background color: one of black, gray, red, orange, blue
- Typeface: Futura
- Today’s news
- Today’s date
Now all that remains is to impose a new order.