Untitled [female nude seated in a partially draped chair] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing of a female nude seated in a chair without a date using graphite on paper. The marks are quick, searching, and layered. The repeated lines make a kind of blurry volume and a sense of implied movement, like the model shifted slightly between marks, you know? The tone is mostly gray on an off-white ground, but there is a lot of variation in the darkness and pressure of the lines. Look at the way he has rendered the shadows on the draped fabric around her legs. There are very dense, dark areas created by hundreds of marks. Whereas in other areas the marks are sparse and light, leaving large parts of the paper untouched. The American artist, Willem DeKooning, comes to mind. Both artists embraced a process-oriented approach to artmaking, emphasizing the act of creation and revision. Like DeKooning, Diebenkorn lets us see his thought process. These are provisional marks, open to change, but somehow they land in a place that feels resolved, at least for the moment.