Untitled [close-up view of reclining nude] [verso] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this untitled drawing with ink on paper, and right away you can see it’s all about movement, right? Big, swooping gestures that suggest a figure, but also a kind of energy, like the model was moving as he drew, or maybe he was moving around the model. I can imagine Diebenkorn, maybe in the late 50s, charcoal in hand, really looking, and really improvising. The ink goes from thick to thin, wet to dry, as he's exploring form, but also something more fleeting—a feeling, a mood. Those dark, concentrated areas, they almost feel like erasures, places where he bore down to find the figure. And then these wispy lines, they’re like ghosts of other possibilities. You know, a drawing like this, it's a record of a search, a way of thinking through the body, through space, through the act of seeing. It's like he's saying, "Here's what I saw, but also here's how I saw it.” And it's never just one thing, is it?