Untitled [seated woman in sandals] 1955 - 1967

Curator: Immediately, I see a study in contemplation, rendered with such economy of line. Editor: We're looking at an ink drawing by Richard Diebenkorn, likely made between 1955 and 1967. The work, titled "Untitled [seated woman in sandals]", presents us with a lone figure, pensively posed. It immediately evokes the ennui of postwar America for me. The gaze directed inward... Curator: Yes, the stark lines articulate form, but the negative space is just as important. Notice how Diebenkorn uses these strategic absences to create the woman’s form. The interplay creates visual tension; we can almost feel the weight of her thoughts. It’s the same method in cubism: breaking down reality into geometry to be analyzed by the viewer. Editor: Indeed, her posture could speak to various forms of alienation that women experienced in those times. The male gaze still held women as muses, objects for creative and intellectual projections from male figures. Even if created by someone sympathetic, the artist's gender plays a significant part in portraying a human. Curator: While acknowledging the gaze, I'm equally drawn to the formal properties. How the severe simplification invites us to decode a familiar posture. It borders abstraction, really; it's as if he's trying to reduce the female figure to the basic essence of line and form, a return to the plane and to painting’s autonomy as such. Editor: Yes, and in that paring down, he reflects some Modernist obsession with origins, to an Eve figure trapped in the confines of mid-century American societal expectation. You feel that even with the loose handling of the medium, which, in his rendering, looks almost provisional and open. What did mid-century liberation and rights actually offer to a woman then? How close to the surface are all those societal constraints? Curator: This makes me reflect upon the figure’s self-containment; there is almost nothing external. The gaze turned resolutely inward, as we said. There's something deeply individual, detached from time and, despite what we've noted earlier, nearly archetypal in the visual handling of this figure. Editor: Absolutely, there's an intentional universality there. Looking closer helps decode layers of identity politics and emotional ambiguity rendered via material simplicity.