Untitled [front view of female nude standing with crossed arms] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this untitled drawing of a female nude, with what looks like charcoal on paper. It's all about the touch of the hand, isn't it? The marks are so immediate, so sure. You can see the give-and-take between the artist and the paper, the way the charcoal catches on the tooth of the surface. There's a real economy of line here, a sense of knowing exactly where to put the emphasis. Look at the way he's rendered the weight of the figure, the subtle curves of the body. It's all there in just a few strokes. There's something so vulnerable and powerful about the pose, too. She's standing there with her arms crossed, like she's both protecting herself and asserting her presence. It reminds me a little of those Matisse line drawings, that same sense of capturing the essence of a form with the fewest possible marks. It’s about stripping things down to their bare essentials, leaving space for the viewer to fill in the gaps. It's an ongoing conversation with art history, one big game of telephone across time.