Given his recourse to language, photography and systems of information, On Kawara is often described as a key figure in the history of Conceptual art. Yet his work stands apart in its devotion to painting and its existential reach. On Kawara Silence is published in conjunction with a major exhibition of Kawaras post-1964 work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Like the exhibition itself, the structure of the book was devised in close collaboration with the late artist and contains essays by leading scholars and critics in various fields, including art history, literary studies and cultural anthropology. It also includes substantial, authoritative descriptions of every category of his production the first time such comprehensive information has appeared in print. Richly illustrated, On Kawara Silence reproduces many examples of the Date Paintings (Today), calendars (One Hundred Years and One Million Years), postcards (I Got Up), telegrams (I Am Still Alive), news cuttings (I Read), maps (I Went), and lists (I Met) that comprised the artists practice beginning in the mid-1960s.
Among other groups of works, the book includes images of the ninety-seven Date Paintings (accompanied by their newspaperlined storage boxes) that Kawara produced during a three-month run of daily painting in 1970. The catalogue also contains reproductions of paintings and drawings produced in Paris and New York in the years that precede the works for which Kawara is best known, as well as rare images of materials related to his working process.