Untitled [legs and buttocks of a female nude] 1955 - 1967

Curator: Look at this evocative pencil drawing, likely created sometime between 1955 and 1967. It's catalogued as "Untitled [legs and buttocks of a female nude]" by Richard Diebenkorn. Editor: Huh. It's just the barest sketch, really, but it somehow gives me the impression of— yearning? Is that odd? The starkness against the vulnerability of the subject…it gets under your skin. Curator: It's not odd at all. Diebenkorn distills form to its absolute essence. Think of the long tradition of the nude in art— the goddesses, the odalisques. Here, those ideals are peeled away. He’s focusing purely on form and shadow, a very modern approach. Editor: Form is right! It feels so immediate. I almost see the artist circling, deciding where the line should fall, a dance of observation! Curator: Consider also the era— the mid-century modernists were deeply invested in essential forms. You have Brancusi, Giacometti... the drive was to uncover fundamental shapes, psychological primitives if you will. The line here carries a hefty emotional load. Editor: Totally. Like, where does that line cross the boundary between "woman" and "geometric exploration"? The way the line stops... are those stocking lines? It changes the feel. I want to see what he'd do next! Was it a gesture or was it truly unfinished? Curator: That ambiguity is precisely what gives it power. This seemingly casual drawing participates in art historical investigations into the form of the nude while revealing something about the anxieties that hide behind the tradition. He's stripping away layers of representation. Editor: Anxieties? I’m still stuck on that yearning…Maybe it's just the angle of the leg, leading me away from what the subject’s front would suggest about this woman… but anxiety rings true. It’s an emotional striptease with no actual promise of revealing anything. Curator: Well put. I appreciate the psychological rawness Diebenkorn achieves with so little. Editor: It is a powerful study, definitely lingers longer than expected, with so few lines, right?