Coffee 1959

Richard Diebenkorn made Coffee with oil on canvas, sometime in the mid-20th century. The thing that gets me is the thickness of the paint, all that juicy impasto, and how it makes every area of the canvas feel charged and alive. Diebenkorn wasn’t trying to hide his process, but to show you every single step in its making, like a map of his thinking. Look how the palette knife has been used to apply paint to the figure’s dark blue dress, and the ground, like a thick, almost sculptural impasto. In contrast, the face is a more delicate affair, rendered with thinner layers, more subtle and watery color. The effect is to bring the figure forward while also flattening the space into a series of planes. Diebenkorn, like a lot of artists of his time, was always having a conversation with the French masters, especially Matisse, whose influence you can see in the bold color contrasts and simplified forms. This is painting that stays with you, that invites you to look again and again and to keep thinking.