Richard Diebenkorn Writings
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Artist's writing
Current owner:
Richard Diebenkorn Foundation Archives
Credit Line:
© Richard Diebenkorn Foundation RD number:
RDFA.157 Description
Transcription:
[Image 1]
Before 1956 I had faith in a painting’s power to be a complete and profound experience in terms only of its physical presence with its expressive aspects [strikethrough] subordinated to and [/strikethrough] in terms of that presence alone. Painting is of course potentially much more than this even though it does not follow that it must be so.
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But on repeated questioning of my reasons for these particular limitations [strikethrough] of my means [/strikethrough] I realized that there was no longer much urgency regarding these reasons and
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[strikethrough] I had then the feeling and now the belief that circumstances today make it possible for the painter to
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At least a few of these reasons were involved with the avoidance
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I could then look, and did, at the table beside me where I found a legitimate poetry attached to the facts of an ashtray and a coffee cup [/strikethrough]
[Image 2]
[strikethrough] The course of a tradition viewed from hindsight has a logic and inevitability to it which may [double strikethrough] cause some [/double strikethrough] tempt some critics to think that this logic and inevitability lead on through the present to the future — at least as far as the present. [/strikethrough]
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that what I had been telling myself for some years about my painting, that I simply wanted it to make sense emotionally, seemed most crucial right now. If the presence of a seated woman rather literally drawn on my canvas didn’t destroy the emotional sense but, in fact, increased it for me, how could I not make paintings like this? [strikethrough] And if I’m more moved by certain fragments of an amateur’s still life than I am by a professional’s most ambitious abstraction this will have some influence on my means of seeking this emotional sense. [/strikethrough]
So this is the position of the student in the class who asks “if I do it and its right for me, who is it to say that its not good”, the answer being “a lot of people.”
[Image 1]
Before 1956 I had faith in a painting’s power to be a complete and profound experience in terms only of its physical presence with its expressive aspects [strikethrough] subordinated to and [/strikethrough] in terms of that presence alone. Painting is of course potentially much more than this even though it does not follow that it must be so.
[line break]
But on repeated questioning of my reasons for these particular limitations [strikethrough] of my means [/strikethrough] I realized that there was no longer much urgency regarding these reasons and
[line break]
[strikethrough] I had then the feeling and now the belief that circumstances today make it possible for the painter to
[line break]
At least a few of these reasons were involved with the avoidance
[line break]
I could then look, and did, at the table beside me where I found a legitimate poetry attached to the facts of an ashtray and a coffee cup [/strikethrough]
[Image 2]
[strikethrough] The course of a tradition viewed from hindsight has a logic and inevitability to it which may [double strikethrough] cause some [/double strikethrough] tempt some critics to think that this logic and inevitability lead on through the present to the future — at least as far as the present. [/strikethrough]
[line break]
that what I had been telling myself for some years about my painting, that I simply wanted it to make sense emotionally, seemed most crucial right now. If the presence of a seated woman rather literally drawn on my canvas didn’t destroy the emotional sense but, in fact, increased it for me, how could I not make paintings like this? [strikethrough] And if I’m more moved by certain fragments of an amateur’s still life than I am by a professional’s most ambitious abstraction this will have some influence on my means of seeking this emotional sense. [/strikethrough]
So this is the position of the student in the class who asks “if I do it and its right for me, who is it to say that its not good”, the answer being “a lot of people.”