Untitled [female nude drying off] 1955 - 1967

This is Richard Diebenkorn's ink drawing of a female nude drying off. It's made with these decisive, but slightly shaky, black lines on a warm toned paper. What strikes me is how the line seems to search for the form, not in a hesitant way, but as if the form is emerging through the act of drawing itself. The body is described with economical strokes. See how the curve of the back is one continuous movement, or how a few lines suggest the weight and volume of the figure. But the lines never quite meet; there's always a gap, an openness, a sense of incompletion. It reminds me of the early Matisse drawings where line is all there is, and the negative space becomes just as important as the figure itself. Diebenkorn's work, especially his later Ocean Park series, often plays with a similar balance of presence and absence, line and space, suggesting that drawing was at the heart of his practice, always. It’s like he’s saying, "Here's what I see, but also, here's all the other possibilities."