Born in Japan, On Kawara is often associated with Conceptualism, a way of working begun in the 1950s by artists in all parts of the world. They sought to make art and life more seamless by producing works in which the idea was of primary importance. Kawara’s TODAY series is an ongoing succession of conceptual paintings begun in 1966, each of which was created on the date indicated and in the language of the country in which it was painted. Each painting takes the artist between eight and nine hours–a full day’s work–to complete. Each object, then, is a literal representation of a day in the artist’s life. In this case, five days he spent in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1989.