RICHARD DIEBENKORN W O R K S O N P A P E R , 1 9 5 5 –1 9 6 7
RICHARD DIEBENKORN WORKS ON PAPER, 1955–1967
TA L K I N G I N A B A R : RICH A RD DIEBENKO RN’ S R E P R E S E N TAT I O N A L D R A W I N G S 19 5 5 –19 6 7 RACHEL FEDERMAN
It has often been said that Richard Diebenkorn courted awkwardness in his representational works in order to subvert—and, in the process, to transcend—his skill as a draftsman and painter. John Elderfield has referred to the “splendid clumsiness” of Diebenkorn’s drawing, which encompasses both works on paper and the drawing within his painted canvases. “He is always taking himself off guard,” writes Elderfield, “surrendering mastery for intuition and probity for surprise. In a risky search for accident, he keeps challenging his control.”1 At the same time that he undertook this risk, the artist regularly spoke of “that kind of fitness that the picture wants to have.” For all the visible signs of process—erased or partially erased lines revealing compositional possibilities or even entire figures pursued and discarded—he once told an interviewer, “Pictures that aren’t done embarrass me.” Recalling the Abstract Expressionist orthodoxy that had overtaken the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) in the late 1940s, he noted critically the lack of “equivocation” and “problem solving” in the “very spontaneous and very loose” work that some produced there.2 In order to surrender control, one must be in possession of it in the first place. Richard Diebenkorn in his studio at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, Fall 1963; photograph by Leo Holub.
As important to Diebenkorn as his allegiance to the great modernists—his admiration for Cézanne, Mondrian, and especially Matisse has been well documented—was a dialectic of greater and lesser freedom. It was, in fact, responsible for some of the most significant shifts in his career. When he left San Francisco to attend graduate school in Albuquerque in 1950, he did so, in part, to escape an environment where “certain things were acceptable, certain things 3
were out … there was a way.” And later he said, “I suppose I just wanted more freedom” of his return to abstraction in 1967, following more than a decade during which he explored still life, landscape, and the figure. In the mid-1950s, however, he seemed to welcome the constraints imposed on him by external subject matter. He explained, “In abstract painting one can’t deal with a kind of entity, entity like an object or person, a concentration of psychology which a person is as opposed to what, where the figure isn’t in the painting.”3 But even these limitations seemed like a kind of freedom. In an undated note, he wrote, “In abstract painting I worried about [he crossed out the words “was oppressed by”] the limited range of possibilities that as time went by became more important to me.”4 Although he succeeded in throwing off the yoke of abstraction—a controversial move at a time when naturalism was freighted with ideological and cultural baggage—he seems at times to have yearned to approach his subject matter even more freely than he did. When as a young man he first encountered Cézanne’s pictures in reproduction, he found them “a little bit repellent.” Perhaps it was for this reason that they “hit [him] very, very hard.”5 “I could be envious of Matisse,” he said, “who could use the same kind of light in the interior as in the exterior.”6 Ever self-aware, he observed, “I temperamentally was very, very far from a Chagall, who can have somebody flying or upside down. … There was a certain sense, a certain logic, about this figure is going to be in such and such an interior, and the light is going to be in a certain way, and it’s going to be a woman.”7 It was the exuberance of music that seems to have prompted Diebenkorn to incorporate it into his studio practice in 1954, shortly before he shifted definitively to representation. He later offered a suggestion of how listening to music affected him: “I’m not going to be able to really describe this. [But Beethoven] does a really non-art kind of thing, and deals with it so deftly. …There’s all sorts of rambunctious music. [But] he’s the only one who can be rambunctious like—like somebody talking in a bar. … I don’t know anyone who has done it as strikingly as Beethoven, this thing. … I would hope sometime to feel that my expression could do that thing.”8 Although we remain aware of Diebenkorn’s efforts to uphold the “fitness” of his pictures—there is always the sense that he is weighing options, problem solving—in the representational drawings in particular, we sometimes find him approaching the tenor of “talking in a bar,” which is to say, a bit more loosely, more familiarly than is typical. An example is his occasional, but notable, use of ballpoint pen. Patented in its familiar form during the Second World War, by the 1960s the pen was ubiquitous. A non-art material that evokes offices and absentminded doodles, it also repels most efforts at erasure or obfuscation, making it an understandable, if still unexpected, choice for an artist who likes to show his work. In Untitled (CR no. 3343, p. 12), ca. 1963, telephone poles drawn with black ballpoint pen recede abruptly into an atmospheric haze about one-third of the way up the sheet, pushed into the distance not by any law of optical perspective, but by the materiality of the sky itself. Composed of broad strokes of blue gouache, the sky covers nearly two-thirds of the sheet as in a landscape painting of the Dutch Golden Age; here, the miracle of modern telecommunication substitutes for the distant spire. The telephone pole is a recurrent motif in Diebenkorn’s landscapes, acting in concert with horizon, ledges, and rooflines (often forming the tripartite compositions for which he is known) to underscore the flatness of the picture plane. This point is made emphatically by the telephone pole that bisects Chabot Valley – Early 60 (CR no. 2729, p. 7), 1960, stubbornly holding the vertical as the road recedes into the distance. More than just a formal device, however, Diebenkorn seems also to have located in the telephone pole an externalized symbol of the modernist’s negotiation of spatial expanse (pictorial depth) and contraction (the picture plane). 4
He once described his work (he was discussing still life, specifically) as a process of elimination: “I could find out which objects were real to me, were viable, by whether or not they stayed in the picture.”9 As art historian Ruth E. Fine has written, “The particular kinds of figures, still lifes, and landscapes Diebenkorn chose speak Richard Diebenkorn and Nathan Oliveira drawing from the model at 2571 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 1955; photo by Lincoln Yamaguchi.
to the importance of intimacy in his art.”10 His still lifes were familiar objects in his home or studio, the landscapes taken from his immediate environs. The most frequent subject of his figurative work was his wife, Phyllis, but even in his drawings of studio models, which can be strikingly erotic, there is usually something that draws us back to the artist’s orbit; a striped bedspread that appears in several such drawings (see p. 23 [CR no. 2957]; pp. 26-27 5
[CR nos. 3060 & 3504]) is similar to, if not the same, one he had as a child.11 (Such objects and patterns become familiar to viewers of his work as well, who may recognize them from one picture to the next.) Other life drawings emphasize the familiarity of the model as a studio presence, often communicated through her disengagement, or apparent boredom. Diebenkorn once described drawing from life, as in the sessions he famously began to attend with Elmer Bischoff and David Park following his return to Berkeley in 1953, as an “exercise in seeing.”12 His use of ballpoint (and occasionally felt tip) pen may be joined to the preceding list of subjects in underscoring a sense of ease or affability in his pictures, and may also be seen as extending this sensibility to the viewer. For what could be more accessible than a ballpoint pen? One answer lies in Untitled (CR no. 3075, pp. 14-15), 1961. Blue ink lends the scene a chromatic energy that belies the banality of the implement that delivered it. But an implement even more accessible than ballpoint pen has been used here: the artist’s fingerprints are present throughout the sheet. A cluster of black fingerprints describes a treelike mass just beyond the corner of the terrace, and prints punctuate the tips of several palm fronds to the right. Fingerprints are among the marks that make up a line of trees midway up the left side of the sheet, and still more can be found impressed on the crowns of the distant palm trees that stand sentry over the horizon. Although they conjure accidents of process, these fingerprints are clearly much more. They are form-giving, embedding the artist in his work in the most literal way. Diebenkorn’s studio at this time was adjacent to a working-class bar where he often met with visitors. When he likened the rambunctiousness of Beethoven to somebody talking in a bar, he may have been thinking of moments like the ones he had there, with the concerns of the studio left behind momentarily, but still close at hand. If the quality he so admired in Beethoven’s music, and which he hoped to achieve in his work, is to be understood through his own metaphor, then he succeeded on several counts. The body of work he produced in these years is deliberate and considered, its dialectic of control and release ever present, but it is also deeply familiar, at times verging on playful— rambunctious, even.
7. Oral history interview with Diebenkorn, Archives of American Art.
1. John Elderfield, The Drawings of Richard Diebenkorn (New York:
8. Diebenkorn quoted in Jane Livingston, “The Art of Richard
The Museum of Modern Art, 1988), 49, 45.
Diebenkorn,” in The Art of Richard Diebenkorn, ed. Jane Livingston
2. Oral history interview with Richard Diebenkorn, 1985 May 1-1987
(Whitney Museum of American Art and UC Press, 1998), 65.
December 15. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 3. Ibid.
9. Oral history interview with Diebenkorn, Archives of American Art.
4. RDFA.133, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation Archives, http://
10. Ruth E. Fine, “Reality: Digested, Transmuted, and Twisted,” in The Art of Richard Diebenkorn, ed. Jane Livingston (Whitney
collection.diebenkorn.org/objects/10789/artists-
Museum of American Art and UC Press, 1998), 98.
writing?ctx=7451f34d-3239-4ea1-ab77-585c948f40cc&idx=2
11. Ibid., 97.
(accessed August 15, 2017).
12. Diebenkorn quoted in Elderfield, 26.
5. Oral history interview with Diebenkorn, Archives of American Art. 6. Diebenkorn quoted in Elderfield, 38. 6
couldn’t stretch the essay. can a photo or art go here?
CHABOT VALLEY – Early 60, 1960 Graphite on paper, 14 x 17 inches (35.6 x 43.2 cm), “Chabot Valley – early 60” reverse, CR no. 2729 7
UNTITLED, c. 1962 Gouache on reverse of printed paper 7 3 ⁄ 8 x 9 7 ⁄ 8 inches (18.7 x 25.1 cm) “1962?” reverse, CR no. 3200 9
UNTITLED, c. 1962 Pastel on lithograph, 11 3 ⁄ 8 x 17 5 ⁄ 8 inches (28.9 x 44.8 cm), CR no. 3193 10
UNTITLED, c. 1962 Pastel on lithograph, 11 3 ⁄ 4 x 17 5 ⁄ 8 inches (29.8 x 44.8 cm), CR no. 3192 11
UNTITLED, c. 1963 Gouache and ballpoint pen on paper, 7 1 â „ 8 x 11 inches (18.1 x 27.9 cm), CR no. 3343 12
UNTITLED, 1955 Watercolor on paper, 8 3 ⁄ 4 x 11 3 ⁄ 4 inches (22.2 x 29.8 cm), “Ensenada – Mex 1955” reverse, CR no. 1333 13
UNTITLED, 1961 Ink, ballpoint pen, and graphite on paper 8 1 ⁄ 2 x 12 3 ⁄ 8 inches (21.6 x 31.4 cm) “RD 61” lower left CR no. 3075 15
UNTITLED, c. 1964 Ink on paper, 8 1 ⁄ 2 x 12 3 ⁄ 8 inches (21.6 x 31.4 cm), CR no. 3448 16
UNTITLED, c. 1958 Gouache and graphite on paper, 12 3 â „ 8 x 17 inches (31.4 x 43.2 cm), CR no. 2493 17
UNTITLED, c. 1964 Ink and graphite on paper, 8 x 11 inches (20.3 x 27.9 cm), CR no. 3438 18
UNTITLED, c. 1967 Charcoal, graphite, and ink on paper, 11 x 8 1 â „ 2 inches (27.9 x 21.6 cm), CR no. 3895 19
UNTITLED, c. 1960-66 Ink and gouache on paper, 17 x 12 1 â „ 2 inches (43.2 x 31.8 cm), CR no. 2805 20
UNTITLED, c. 1955-66 Charcoal on paper, 17 x 12 1 â „ 2 inches (43.2 x 31.8 cm), CR no. 1780 21
UNTITLED, c. 1960–66 Charcoal and ink on paper, 17 x 14 inches (43.2 x 35.6 cm), CR no. 2869 22
UNTITLED, c. 1960–66 Charcoal and ink on paper, 13 7 ⁄ 8 x 17 inches (35.2 x 43.2 cm), CR no. 2957 23
UNTITLED, c. 1960–66 Charcoal, ink, and felt-tip pen on paper, 23 x 14 1 ⁄ 2 inches (58.4 x 36.8 cm), CR no. 2789 24
UNTITLED, c. 1960-66 Charcoal on paper, 25 x 19 inches (63.5 x 48.3 cm), CR no. 2886 25
UNTITLED, c. 1960-66 Ink and graphite on paper, 16 x 11 inches (40.6 x 27.9 cm), CR no. 3060 26
UNTITLED, c. 1964 Charcoal and ink on paper, 14 x 17 inches (35.6 x 43.2 cm), CR no. 3504 27
UNTITLED, 1967 Graphite and ink on paper 14 x 17 inches (35.6 x 43.2 cm) “RD 67” lower left CR no. 3787 29
UNTITLED, c. 1957–63 Gouache on paper, 14 1 ⁄ 4 x 11 1 ⁄ 4 inches (36.2 x 28.6 cm), CR no. 3092 30
UNTITLED, 1961 Gouache on paper, 17 x 14 inches (43.2 x 35.6 cm), CR no. 3091 31
UNTITLED, c. 1957–63 Gouache on paper, 12 1 ⁄ 4 x 9 1 ⁄ 4 inches (31.1 x 23.5 cm), CR no. 2215 32
UNTITLED, c. 1957–66 Gouache and charcoal on paper, 8 1 ⁄ 2 x 11 inches (21.6 x 27.9 cm), CR no. 2568 33
UNTITLED, 1967 Gouache and graphite on paper, 13 7 â „ 8 x 17 inches (35.2 x 43.2 cm), CR no. 3814 34
UNTITLED, c. 1960-67 Charcoal, watercolor, and graphite on paper, 17 x 14 inches (43.2 x 35.6 cm), CR no. 2811 35
UNTITLED, c. 1955-60 Watercolor and graphite on paper 10
⁄ x 10
3 4
⁄ inches (27.3 x 27.3 cm)
3 4
CR no. 1936 37
We are delighted to present this exhibition of the work of Richard Diebenkorn. The works on paper in this exhibition were executed between 1955-67 during which time the artist lived in Berkeley, CA until moving to Santa Monica, CA in 1966. During this period he made figures, interiors, landscapes and still lifes following his earlier explorations into abstraction.
We are indebted to the trustees and staff of the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation without whose generosity and collaboration this show would not be possible. We extend our gratitude to them and the family of the artist. Thanks also to Rachel Federman for her perceptive essay about this body of work.
John Van Doren Dorsey Waxter
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RICHARD DIEBENKORN 19 2 2 – 19 9 3
Born in Portland, Oregon (1922). Family moved to San Francisco Bay Area (1924). Attended Stanford University (1940–43; BA, 1949). Studied at University of California, Berkeley (1943) while serving in the U. S. Marine Corps (1943–45). Attended California School of Fine Arts (1946). Lived in Sausalito, California and taught at California School of Fine Arts (1947–50). Studied at University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (MA, 1951). Moved back to the Bay Area and began the Berkeley series of abstract expressionist paintings (1953). Culminates his first abstract period while also drawing from the model and moving toward figurative painting (1955). Taught at San Francisco Art Institute (1959–63). Lived in Santa Monica and taught at University of California, Los Angeles (1966–73). Began the Ocean Park series (1967). Moved to Healdsburg, California (1988). Died in Berkeley, California (1993).
Major traveling retrospectives: Richard Diebenkorn, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; traveled to Fundación Juan March, Madrid; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt; Stadtische Galerie im Stadel, Frankfurt; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1991–93). The Art of Richard Diebenkorn, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; traveled to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1997– 98). Museum exhibitions include: The Drawings of Richard Diebenkorn, organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; traveled to San Francisco Museum of Art and The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (1988 –89). Clubs and Spades, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (2002). The Ocean Park Series, Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth; traveled to the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2011–12). The Berkeley Years, 1953 –1966, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; traveled to the Palm Springs Art Museum (2013–14). Richard Diebenkorn, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2015). Richard Diebenkorn: The Sketchbooks Revealed, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University (2015–16).
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PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH Anderson Collection at Stanford University, Stanford, CA Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, CA Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, CO Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA CU Art Museum, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA Fine Arts Collection, University of California, Davis, CA Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, MI Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, CA Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, HI Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, IN Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Stanford, CA Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Kansas City, MO Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis, MO Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX Montana Historical Society, Helena, MT Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts, New York, NY
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National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, UT North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ Raymond Jonson Gallery Collection, University Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM Robert Hull Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA Santa Cruz Island Foundation, Carpinteria, CA Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ University Art Museum, State University of New York at Albany, NY University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MI Washington Art Consortium, WA Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT CANADA Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto SOUTH KOREA Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul
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Published on the occasion of the exhibition Richard Diebenkorn: Works on Paper, 1955-1967 November 8, 2017 – January 20, 2018 Design by Doyle Partners Edited by Dorsey Waxter, Liz Sadeghi, Sophia Jackson and Nick Naber Essay © 2017 by Rachel Federman, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at The Morgan Library & Museum Artwork photography by Richard Grant and Carl Schmitz © 2017 The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation Additional photography © Courtesy Estate of Leo Holub (p. 2); Estate of Lincoln Yamaguchi (p. 5) We would like to thank the following people for their unwavering support in the production of this exhibition: Richard Grant, Gretchen Grant, Andrea Liguori, Carl Schmitz, Rakia Faber and Daisy Murray Holman. ISBN: 978-0-9908058-8-5 Printed and bound in Boston by Grossman Marketing Group © VAN DOREN WAXTER, New York, NY All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this catalogue may be reproduced without permission of the publisher. Cover: CR no. 3343, p. 12 Frontispiece: CR no. 2811, p. 35
23 EAST 73RD STREET NEW YORK NY 10021 PHONE 212-445-0444 INFO@VANDORENWAXTER.COM
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