Untitled [seated female nude in an open shirt] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing of a seated nude with ink on paper. Looking at those spare, confident lines makes me think about how much an artist sees and doesn’t see. The model has a shirt on, but not really. She’s present, but not fully described. What was Diebenkorn thinking as he was drawing? Was he trying to capture her essence, or was he just playing with line and form? The lines feel so casual, yet deliberate, defining the shapes of her body with minimal effort. It’s all about the relationship between the line and the space around it. You know, drawing like this is like a conversation, a back-and-forth between the artist and the subject. Diebenkorn was clearly in dialogue with Matisse and Picasso. He's asking similar questions, making similar moves. Artists don't work in a vacuum; we're all riffing off each other, remixing the past in our own way. It’s a reminder that art is an ongoing process of discovery.