Untitled [standing female nude with drapery over right shoulder] 1955 - 1967

Curator: Immediately striking is the vulnerability in this sketch. There's a hesitant quality to the lines, a raw immediacy. Editor: We're looking at an untitled drawing by Richard Diebenkorn, likely created between 1955 and 1967. It's a standing female nude, rendered in pencil, with some possible ink additions. The woman is draped with fabric over her right shoulder. Curator: Yes, that draping is so crucial. It provides both a shield and a point of visual tension. Think of Venus Pudica, where modesty paradoxically amplifies the sensuality. The shadow play and angular lines almost lend her a statuesque strength that contrasts with the delicate sketch work, however. Editor: Diebenkorn returned often to the figure during this period, engaging in an artistic conversation of what drawing from life meant in the age of abstract expressionism. We see him grappling with these long-standing academic conventions that feel a bit dated in a mid-century milieu fixated on process and improvisation. Curator: Interesting, how the image speaks to these artistic concerns within figuration's social context. I fixated upon the subject, but how the work speaks against conventional constraints, or within them is critical. But tell me about that loose hatching; do you see any precedent here? Editor: Well, if you consider earlier Expressionists like Kirchner, perhaps. Yet Diebenkorn’s lines feel less psychologically fraught, less burdened by angst. Here, there's more of an attempt to describe form, light, space. Curator: I can concede that. And the seeming anonymity is rather poignant as well. We’re forced to grapple with how we engage with this unknown, unknowable figure. And this idea feels inherently part of Diebenkorn’s cultural sphere. Editor: Ultimately, this work really highlights the visual push-and-pull that often characterizes Diebenkorn’s works on paper. I see both hesitation and directness coexisting, which brings it some unexpected intensity. Curator: Indeed. The longer we examine it, the more that tension resolves in such a harmonious vision, paradoxically.