In 1967, Richard Diebenkorn started the first of his Ocean Park paintings. He would continue working on this series of luminous abstracts for the next twenty years.
A wonderful show of many of these paintings has arrived at the Corcoran, and it is the perfect summer show (and one of the best exhibits in many years). Dozens and dozens of Richard Diebenkorn’s large (roughly 8 x 6 ft) paintings are in sky-lit, sun-filled spaces. His smaller, jewel-like works on paper and cigar-box lids, as well as prints, are interspersed in smaller rooms in the exhibit.
The paintings invite long observation: up-close, from across the room, and from two rooms away. Diebenkorn’s fine-tuned adjustments are all visible on the canvases. He redrew charcoal lines, added and scraped down thin, glowing layers of paint, making large and tiny changes until each painting was a satisfying, luminous whole.
Displayed chronologically, the Ocean Park series (named after a beachfront neighborhood in Santa Monica where his studio was) start with a few paintings with hints of abstracted Matisse-like shapes; you can then see Diebenkorn play with his palimpsest of grids and sunny color to make the series an ever changing theme and variation.
There are three essays in the catalog: exhibit curator Sarah Bancroft on Diebenkorn’s painting history before, during and after Ocean Park; curator Susan Landauer on his echoes with other California painters, Matisse, and Cézanne; and poet (and Ocean Park neighbor) Peter Levitt’s rhapsody on Diebenkorn’s sea and sky-inspired colors.
Go immerse yourself and revel in Diebenkorn’s abstract masterworks.
