Untitled [view of back and buttocks of a kneeling female nude] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this untitled drawing of a kneeling nude, with graphite on paper, sometime in the twentieth century. The scratchy quality to the lines, the way they build up and then dissolve, it’s all about process. You can almost see the artist circling around the figure, trying to capture her form. Look at the density of marks around the head, how they create a sense of shadow and weight, compared to the lighter, more gestural lines that define the curve of the back. There’s a real physicality to the drawing, you can feel the pressure of the graphite on the paper, the artist’s hand moving across the surface. I keep thinking about de Kooning, another artist who was obsessed with the figure, but also with the act of painting itself. Diebenkorn reminds us that art is never finished, only abandoned. It’s a conversation, a back-and-forth between the artist and the work, a constant questioning and revising. And ultimately, it’s up to us, the viewers, to continue that conversation, to find our own meanings and interpretations in the marks and gestures that the artist has left behind.