Untitled [seated nude with her legs apart] 1955 - 1967

Curator: Up next, we have a look at an ink drawing by Richard Diebenkorn, likely created sometime between 1955 and 1967. It’s simply called “Untitled [seated nude with her legs apart].” Editor: My first thought? That's intimate, not just physically, but in its energy, it feels like peering into someone's sketchbook, or a secret glimpse backstage. A very vulnerable gesture. Curator: Yes, it does possess a raw directness. We find this kind of stark line work, a certain brutal honesty, quite a bit in postwar figurative drawing, wouldn’t you agree? There’s almost a psychological excavation going on with the very minimal means deployed here. Editor: Absolutely. It's stripped down, revealing… everything, really. And even though it's just a few lines, it's incredibly evocative. The woman is present, not objectified – a subtle but profound difference. The stark simplicity makes her all the more present, the feeling that we are watching the inner process. Curator: Consider the power of the absent details – the face only partially rendered, for example. It shifts our focus to the overall form, yes, but also allows the viewer to project. Think of the symbolism embedded in such spareness; Diebenkorn’s omissions trigger deeply resonant psychological responses. We bring so much of our baggage into this seemingly simple composition. Editor: That's a very apt description of it. It's not finished, and neither are we. The artwork acts as a reflecting pool in this manner, if you’re generous to the composition and to yourself, it will give back ten fold. Curator: In this case, looking carefully can lead us back through personal experience into the collective cultural repository. We are shaped by visual representations, yet also bring something fresh, perhaps transformative, each time we look anew. Editor: Perhaps this is why there isn’t too much to 'solve' in the picture itself. One brings themselves as the object, and this, to me, is where the resolution of experience meets artwork. Curator: Beautifully put. Let’s move on to the next work.