Untitled [front view of a standing female nude] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this painting of a standing nude, likely sometime in the mid twentieth century, using what looks like ink or maybe diluted paint on paper. It's all about process here; you can almost feel him making the marks. Look at the varying shades of black and grey, transparent in places, opaque in others. He's not trying to hide the way the ink bleeds and pools, embracing the materiality of the medium. See how the lines around her left leg are both descriptive and abstract, indicating form while also dissolving it? It’s like he’s finding the figure as he goes. This reminds me a little of Matisse's line drawings, where he could capture so much with so little. But Diebenkorn has a rawness, a directness, that feels very American, like a de Kooning drawing. Ultimately, the real beauty of this piece lies in its ambiguity, in the way it invites us to participate in the act of seeing.