Richard Diebenkorn: Beginnings, 1942-1955
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Individual Artists
Richard Diebenkorn: Beginnings, 1942-1955 Details
Review Acclaimed in his early 20s, painter Richard Diebenkorn (1922 93) transcended the usual New York bias against Californians with numerous exhibitions on both coasts. He showed flair at the vanguard of the transition toward abstract expressionism in American art, working among a cadre of progenitors of the style. These mentor-collaborators included Clyfford Still, David Park, and Hassell Smith, all many years his senior. Over time, these artists repeatedly crossed the line between abstraction and representation Diebenkorn perhaps best known for his elegant Ocean Park paintings, which evoke the sun s clarity outside his Santa Monica studio, while toying with that boundary. Spawned by a show at Sacramento s Crocker Museum, this biography focuses on his early years of searching for a mature style while teaching at Berkeley and the California School of Fine Art and engaging with the pacesetters of American painting. Crocker curator Shields deserves praise for giving us much more than an exhibition catalog: not since Gerald Nordland s authoritative profile, published before Diebenkorn s death, has there been such a devoted and definitive biography. While tracking the artist s development, Shields includes loads of interesting detail, such as Diebenkorn s use of house paints owing to cost, the vastness of his canvases, and a falling-out with Still, which makes Still sound like a stuffed shirt. Verdict An accomplished bio of an exceptional, revered American master. --Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L.The exhibition catalog, a lushly illustrated biography by the Sacramento museum s chief curator, Scott A. Shields, is a document that should find an immediate place on the shelves of art history libraries everywhere --San Francisco ChronicleThe works in the exhibition illustrate Diebenkorn s progress from age 20 to 33. But equally important is the exhibition catalog s essay by Scott A. Shields. The essay is highly readable and does what good biography does: puts the subject in the context (of the people, institutions and ideas) that shapes them. The overall exhibition, with the catalogue, is a great achievement. --Oregon Arts Watch Read more From the Inside Flap Audiences today generally know Richard Diebenkorn's career in terms of three major evolutions: the Sausalito, Albuquerque, Urbana, and "early Berkeley" periods of Abstract Expressionism (1947-1955); the Berkeley figurative/representational period (1955-1966); and the Ocean Park (1967-1988) and Healdsburg (1988-1992) series of abstractions. Yet Diebenkorn's earliest paintings and drawings remain little known. This catalogue focuses on Diebenkorn's evolution to maturity. It features nearly two hundred paintings and drawings, many from the archives of the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, that precede his shift to figuration. These early pieces evolved rapidly from representational landscape scenes and portraits of military colleagues, to semiabstract and Surrealist-inspired depictions of topography and the human form, to the artist's mature Abstract Expressionist paintings. Many of these pieces will be unfamiliar to the public, yet they offer a fuller picture of Diebenkorn's precocious achievements and set the stage for what was yet to come. Read more See all Editorial Reviews
Reviews
I’m a big fan of Scott Shields. Followed his work since the Monterey Peninsula exhibition years ago. His books are always first rate, raising him to a curatorial level that only a handful will ever achieve. I love his insights into Diebenkorn and will travel to MUNCIE to see this exhibition. Fine work, courageous curator!!
