www.artsiteguide.com/diebenkorn/ -
John Seed How California Painter Richard Diebenkorn Became
a Role Model, and a Real Person, to a Young Artist , 2002, 1977
"In October of 1977 a "Diebenkorn Retrospective" opened at the Oakland Museum, . . .
"Formula-painting seems the real subject of the 'Ocean Park" series. Every one of these large paintings, to a large or small degree, recalls a beauty which Diebenkorn's compulsive personal sensibility has distilled from the landscape."
". . .
"A few weeks later I pulled up at the curb of a house which sat on a winding road leading out of Santa Monica Canyon. Yes, there was a Porsche in the driveway, but that is a given for Pacific Palisades. The house was unassuming in front, and a couple of very ordinary dogs were barking at the front gate.
"The man who answered the door was stooped and somehow totally familiar. Writer Dan Hofstadter describes him well in his book Temperments:
"'He has something of the appearance of a leading man in an old-fashioned drawing room comedy: the sculptural planarity, the dark emphatic eyebrows and mustache-deep clefts running like parentheses from cheeks to chin-clefts that behave like dimples and help to give him his genial, kindly appearance.'
". . . On the living room wall, a long, horizontal Diebenkorn canvas of a tea set on a tablecloth stolen from Matisse. There were lots of small drawings from India, a charcoal nude by Los Angeles artist Bill Brice.
"The house, which was L-shaped, had a stunning view across a patio with potted orange trees into Santa Monica Canyon. Each view was like a painting itself. I felt that I must be in the South of France. Mrs. Diebenkorn was warm and accomodating . . . I couldn't help but notice their calm connection with each other.
". . .
"What do I remember about the next hour or two? Tea served with lemon (in glasses cups stolen from a Matisse), a dining room filled with charcoal drawings, afternoon light cutting new shadows on the big still-life in the living room.
"Diebenkorn talked at length about his admiration for the work of James Doolin, a painter in the graduate program at UCLA. This painter, he said, was working on an aerial view of Santa Monica Mall. The painting, apparently huge, was complex, fascinating, and painterly: a masterpiece in the making.
"Years later, when I met Doolin, and was able to view this painting, now in the Oakland Museum, he was touched when I told him what Diebenkorn had said.
". . ."