Untitled [seated female nude holding an object] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing of a seated female nude with graphite on paper. The surface is alive with marks, a frenzy of hatching and cross-hatching that somehow coalesce into a figure. I wonder what it was like for Diebenkorn, wrestling with the image, trying to capture the essence of the model before him. You can see his struggle to pin down the form, as he searches for the right line, the right angle, the perfect shadow. The way the dark graphite is layered, it almost feels like he is sculpting the figure out of the paper itself. I love the way the negative space is just as important as the positive. All those lines creating a kind of atmosphere around her. It reminds me of Matisse, another master of line and form. He used a similar technique to describe the energy of a room or the feeling of a person. It's all one big conversation, isn't it? Each artist adding their voice to the chorus, riffing on the themes and ideas of those who came before.