Large Still Life 1966

Richard Diebenkorn’s "Large Still Life" at MoMA is a meditation on the everyday, rendered in oil paint with a tender touch. It's a harmonious blend of muted blues and earthy browns. I can imagine Diebenkorn stepping back, squinting, adjusting, then lunging forward to lay down a stroke, a line. There are passages of thin paint, almost translucent, contrasting with thicker impasto, creating a tactile surface that invites you to run your fingers over it. That dark bottle at the bottom, and those floating orbs in the distance—those are all marks of inquiry. Diebenkorn's work reminds me of other painters who were equally obsessed with light, space, and the poetics of the mundane, like Morandi. I think they are both in conversation with Matisse, especially through their simplification of forms and focus on the interplay of color and shape. Painting is nothing if not an ongoing dialogue across time, isn't it?