Untitled [side view of a seated female nude] 1955 - 1967

Here's Richard Diebenkorn's "Untitled [side view of a seated female nude]", made with a blunt drawing implement on paper. The smudgy charcoal defines this figure with a sort of tender uncertainty. I imagine Diebenkorn circling around the form, trying to get it just right, but not wanting to lose the freshness of the initial impression. Those marks on her legs… were they erasures, pentimenti? You can almost feel his hand moving across the page, grappling with the weight and volume of the figure. There’s something vulnerable about this nude, a kind of quiet intimacy. It reminds me of other artists like, say, Alice Neel who weren’t afraid to show the body as it is, with all its imperfections. Maybe Diebenkorn was thinking about them too. These artists build a feeling of a conversation around the figure. Each mark feels like a question, an invitation to look closer, to see more.