1966 Westfall 1998

Stephen Westfall DiebenkornArt in America , Oct, 1998, 1966, 1914

    "The arc of Diebenkorn's career up until that point would be enough to ensure his place in art history. But the most profound developments in his painting lay ahead. The will to abstraction was never far from his figurative work. John Elderfield has pointed out that the anonymity of his figures, especially in their blankness of expression or entire lack of facial features, helped redistribute expressive energy throughout the surface of his pictures. (3) The master of this figurative formalism is Matisse. In early 1966, a year and a half after visiting the great Matisses at the Hermitage and Pushkin museums in Russia, Diebenkorn saw a Matisse exhibition at UCLA, where he was weighing an offer to come teach. Two paintings in particular bowled him over, View of Notre Dame and French Window at Collioure, both from 1914. The first painting interposes a shadowy blue wash over a view from the studio window of the Cathedral across the Seine; each element is roughly indicated with minimal linear gestures that leave their corrective adjustments exposed. The second painting is almost totally abstract, divided into essentially four vertical planes of color that indicate a space receding into interior shadow. These paintings clarified the principal elements-the architectural delineations and perspectives, and the shifting atmospheric planes of color-that distinguish Diebenkorn's epic Ocean Park series, which he began in late 1967, a year after moving to Santa Monica."

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 Kelyn Roberts 2017