Untitled [seated female nude in a wicker chair] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing of a seated nude in a wicker chair with charcoal on paper. Can you imagine him there? Maybe in a studio in California, grappling with the form, the pose, and that pesky chair! The charcoal is thick in places, really digging into the paper, then light and feathery elsewhere, describing the soft curves of the figure. There’s a beautiful tension between the solid mass of the body and the linear structure of the chair. See how the dark strokes create a sense of volume, while the lighter touches suggest light and shadow, almost like he’s sculpting with charcoal. That line that defines the back, it's so confident and sure, yet the lines describing the chair are more tentative and searching. I bet he was thinking about Matisse, and all those artists who have tried to capture the human form with a few, well-placed lines. It’s like they’re all in conversation, each adding their own voice to this ongoing exploration of what it means to see and to represent the world around us.