Paul Bonaventura Richard Diebenkorn, L.A. MOCA Brochure, 1992
"Of all of the qualities that distinguish Richard Diebenkorn's paintings, it is perhaps their manifestations of fallibility that attract us to them so strongly. Their looks give us insights into the workings of the artist's mind, mirroring the kinds of decisions, intuitive and spontaneous, which Diebenkorn is called upon to make in the fabrication of a painting: what constitutes the best juxtaposition of colors between one part of a canvas and its neighbor, for example, or the most favorable placement for an arm or a glass or a tree. Most importantly, they show how regularly Diebenkorn is confounded by his own decision-making, how choices made are subsequently adjudged to be inappropriate in the wake of further developments and how frequently they necessitate a degree of new and more inspired thinking to imbue them with the required correctness.
"By approaching paintings as an empirical activity, the artist has chosen to explore picture-making as a series of problems and possibilities. "With each new painting," he says, "I find a way (to go about it) all to soon, and that's when the trouble starts." Although most painters choose to obscure the trial-and-error nature of their craft, Diebenkorn has settled upon a brand of revelatory construction. His adjustments on the canvas take their leads from the precursors and it is entirely fitting that, on occasion, they require the ghost-like showings-through of those first impulsive essays in order to illustrate what was considered too obvious beforehand and what more eloquent options have been advanced with the aid of hindsight.
"As a consequence, the spectator is often aware of a very genuine sense of struggle, of a contest between the wishes and expectations of the painter and the seemingly perverse logic of the picture's components. The presence of restless amendments and rubbing-out in the Ocean Park series and the sometimes copious over-painting in the figurative works stand as a testament not only to a history of frustration and reappraisal, but also to an assiduous honesty, of an approach to painting that marks out the revisionist tendencies of an inquiring mind eager for answers to the questions it puts forth. Diebenkorn's pictorial and intellectual odyssey proclaims an avowed desire "to get everything right" notwithstanding the seeming impossibility of that course.
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"Any panoramic associations in these unashamedly sensual pictures are perhaps unwittingly reinforced for the onlooker by an understated and atmospheric palette redolent of hazy smog over congested freeways, of shimmering hilltops and parched fields, of dazzlingly reflective pastel-colored walls and freshly watered suburban lawns. Complex and tentative in some instances, straightforward and emphatic in others, the paintings give off a kind of light with which the region is traditionally identified. However, for the artist the heavy-lidded Pacific sunshine is something of which he becomes aware only after periods of activity in the studio. "Non- painters often say, 'What a lovely light here,' but I myself don't see it . . . My own approach is very different. I see the light only at the end of working on a painting. I mean, I discover the light of a place gradually, and only through painting it." In his discriminating avoidance of the easy solution, Diebenkorn has spent the last fifty years searching for the best possible light."