Talking About Diebenkorn in New Mexico

An Exhibition Review by Beth S. Gersh-Nesic

Richard Diebenkorn (American, 1922-1993)
Untitled (Albuquerque), 1952
Oil on canvas
68 3/4 x 60 in. (174.6 x 152.4 cm)
The Buck Collection, Laguna Beach, California
© The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn


A father held his toddler daughter aloft in his arms and the two pointed toward the red, yellow and pale pink in a Richard Diebenkorn painting inspired by the Albuquerque landscape some time in 1952. The parent asked: "Which painting do you like best?," and turned her body ever so gently to present a panoramic view of Diebenkorn in New Mexico at New York University's Grey Art Gallery. Her answer disappeared directly into her father's ear, protected from this local eavesdropper who was completely captivated by Diebenkorn's New Mexico period, brought together in 40 paintings and drawings from public and private collections as well as the Diebenkorn estate.

Which work would I select? Better yet, why not buy a whole house where Diebenkorn's mural circa 1950-1952 was painted over. "They haven't discovered where the mural is," curator Charles Strong divulged during our conversation. "It's probably worth more than the house itself at this point," referring to Joan Evans' home in the Old Town district of Albuquerque.


Richard Diebenkorn and a mural painted for Joan Evans in the Old Town district of Albuquerque, 1950-52
Paint on plaster wall,
approx. 5 x 10 ft.
Mural now painted over
© The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn


Ruminating over real estate value and canny art investment seemed of little importance in the presence of a Diebenkorn expert: "How should we look at a Richard Diebenkorn painting?," I asked Charles Strong, thinking of the exchange between the thoughtful adult and eager child. An artist himself who studied with Diebenkorn in the early 1960s at California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute), Strong replied, "I let the work of art tell me how to look at it."

And with that statement he walked over to Untitled (Albuquerque), 1951, in order to trace Diebenkorn's journey from color to color, line to line, passage to passage, charting the history of how this work came into existence. We observed that the unlikely feminine color pink shimmered among the bolder primary colors red and yellow, although roughed up a bit with calligraphic black lines that seemed to shape or limit this minor tone. "Should I organize this work by identifying readable signs, like that X in the center," I threw out, pointing to a central mark next to a yellow oval reminiscent of a thought bubble in a comic strip or the profile of a head. "I don't think so," Strong advised knowingly.

Strong suggested we think about jazz. He explained that Diebenkorn listened to Dixieland jazz played by the Studio 13 Jazz Band (artists David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Charlie Clark, and Douglas MacAgy) at California Institute of Art where Diebenkorn studied and taught before and after he went to New Mexico. He was also aware of post-World War II bebop, an experimental contemporary music that expressed the exuberance of those who survived the Depression and possible death overseas. Bebop based its structure on theme, improvisation and resolution, very much in keeping with 1950s "action art," better known as Abstract Expression.


Richard Diebenkorn (American, 1922-1993)
Untitled (Albuquerque), 1951
Oil on canvas
56 x 44 3/4 in. (142.2 x 113.7 cm)
Courtesy Greenberg Van Doren Gallery
© The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn


Indeed jazz played a significant role in art during the late 1940s and 1950s (as rock and roll insinuated itself into Pop Art in the 1960s). Born out of Dada's anti-art, "anything goes" mentality, and Surrealism's quasi-religious devotion to the unconscious (allegedly), Abstract Expressionism tried to further undress the mind to free the psyche. The commitment required slow consideration coupled with sudden bursts of unbridled invention. The result depended on intuition and skill—the skill to harness effort and yet feel free in the moment, like a jazz musician improvising off of a riff in order to make the melody his own.

Richard Diebenkorn, like most westerners, was a maverick. Born in Oregon in 1922, he moved to San Francisco in 1924 and attended Stanford University from 1940 to 1942. Military service interrupted his studies when he joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1943. During that period, he engaged in mapmaking and cartography, facilitated by flights over the landscape of the United States. Stationed in Virginia, thirty miles from Washington, D.C., Diebenkorn took advantage of his proximity to the Phillips Collection, where he studied the flat, colorful sense of space mastered by Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne.

In 1946, Diebenkorn enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts, where he studied under David Park, an expressionist Bay Area artist. That same year, Diebenkorn received a fellowship to study in Woodstock, New York and from there he visited the New York City galleries, drinking in an urban sensibility that seemed so different from its west coast counterpart. In 1947, Diebenkorn accepted a teaching position at California School of Fine Art, and in 1949, he graduated from Stanford. From 1950 to 1952, Diebenkorn pursued his MFA at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, with funds from the GI Bill. This decision presented a new sense of color, space and light that belonged neither to the west or the east. Here, despite his teachers' misgivings, Diebenkorn worked on his Abstract Expressionist orientation to art. From 1955 to 1973, Diebenkorn taught in several California schools, including UCLA. His best known series, Ocean Park, inspired by that district in Santa Monica, began in 1967 and ended with his death in 1993.


Richard Diebenkorn (American, 1922-1993)
Miller 22, 1951
Oil on canvas
45 1/4 x 57 in. (114.9 x 144.8 cm)
Bequest of Josephine Morris
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
© The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn


Although some New Mexico works had been included in the Whitney Museum retrospective ten years ago, they were surely overshadowed by Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series in that enormous show. Diebenkorn in New Mexico thankfully isolates this formative period in the early 1950s, greatly enhancing the power of each work by creating a conversation as the paintings relate side by side or within the same room. This conversation takes place between the pieces and the audience as well. For we interrogate the art as our eyes navigate the surfaces, searching for Diebenkorn's particular understanding of this southwestern terrain. Miller 22 for example communicates the hushed tone of the desert—so delicate and yet so confident in its understated way, like a toddler's secret whisper into her father's waiting ear: "I like that one."

"Diebenkorn in New Mexico" was co-curated by Charles Strong and Charles M. Lovell, the director of the Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico, where this exhibition originated and was on view from June 2-September 09, 2007. It then traveled to the San Jose Museum of Art for display from October 13, 2007-January 6, 2008. This critic visited the exhibition during its stop from January 24-April 5, 2008 at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, New York, New York 10003 (Telephone: 212-998-6780; Website). The gallery is open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Wednesdays from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., Saturdays from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and is closed Sundays, Mondays and all major holidays. Suggested admission is $3; admission is free to NYU students, faculty and staff.

"Diebenkorn in New Mexico" will be on view at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC from June 21 through September 7, 2008.

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From your Guide: Beth Gersh-Nesic, is an art history professor, author, art critic and the director of the New York Arts Exchange, an arts education service which offers tours, lectures and workshops in various venues, including museums, galleries, artists' studios and arts organizations.