Untitled [woman sleeping on a floral spread] [recto] 1956

Richard Diebenkorn made this untitled sketch of a woman sleeping on a floral spread with graphite on paper. It is all about the line! The magic is in the contour: you feel the artist finding the form, one line at a time. The repeated and broken lines build a sense of volume. I love how the lines around the body seem to hover, just barely defining her shape. It is the pentimenti – the visible traces of revisions and corrections – that are especially appealing. Look at the flower. It is like a little sun, or maybe an asterisk, marking a spot on the page. I think of Matisse’s line drawings, or maybe even a Cy Twombly doodle. Diebenkorn, like these artists, reminds us that art is a conversation across time, an ongoing experiment with seeing and mark-making. It’s about embracing the beauty of imperfection, the poetry of the unfinished.