Untitled [a male and female nude seated on the floor] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this untitled drawing of two seated nudes using ink on paper. It's all about the line, right? So raw and direct. The starkness of the black lines against the paper creates a feeling of immediacy, like a snapshot of a fleeting moment. It’s interesting that it isn’t overworked. It feels like the beginning of something, which for me opens up a space for imagination. Look at the male figure’s hand. The almost cartoonish way it's rendered contrasts with the more subtle rendering of the rest of the figure. That tension between abstraction and representation is something that Diebenkorn plays with a lot, like de Kooning, maybe, and later on, someone like Elizabeth Peyton. It's like he's saying, "I see you," but also, "I'm just making a picture." Which is the fun part.