Untitled [bust of a female model] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn created this drawing of a woman’s bust with ink on paper. I love the quick, almost impatient lines that construct this woman’s face and upper body. Look at the marks around her eyes; those are not just descriptive but evocative, full of feeling. The ink is dense in these areas and creates shadows in the same places that concern the planes of the face. I wonder if Diebenkorn was thinking of Matisse when he made this. Matisse often produced very similar works when thinking about a subject. These black lines are so full of energy that it is hard not to imagine him circling the model, trying to capture something essential in the twist of a line. It reminds me that artists have always looked to each other for ideas, working through the same problems and pushing each other to see the world in new ways. Each line is a way of seeing and feeling, as the body makes marks intuitively on the page.