Untitled [head of a woman] [recto] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this untitled portrait of a woman with ink on paper, and what strikes me is how economical his approach is. He's really saying so much with so little. I love the way the ink washes across the page, creating these areas of light and shadow that suggest form without explicitly defining it. There's a real push and pull between representation and abstraction going on here, a hallmark of Diebenkorn's work. The textures that he's able to achieve with the ink – from the delicate washes to the bold, graphic strokes – really give the piece a sense of immediacy. Look at how he renders the eye on the left; it’s just a dark dash, but it speaks volumes. Thinking about other artists who played with the same kind of balance between representation and abstraction, I'm reminded of Philip Guston and his late-career paintings. Like Guston, Diebenkorn invites us to see the world in a new way, to embrace ambiguity and to find beauty in the unexpected.