Lot Essay
In 1967, after moving to Los Angeles from San Francisco, Richard Diebenkorn "turned again to non-referential painting, responding afresh to the particular qualities of light and landscape of Santa Monica as well as to the color improvisations and daring formal conceptions of Matisse" (G. Nordland, Richard Diebenkorn, New York 1987, p. 145). The resultant series of paintings, which occupied the artist for the remainder of his life, was called Ocean Park, after the neighborhood in which Diebenkorn's studio was located.
One of the paintings by Matisse that made a strong impression on Diebenkorn and particularly affected the conception of Ocean Park #26, was Open Window, Collioure, 1914. This enigmatic painting was as close to total abstraction as Matisse ever came, and until one sees the title, the subject of an open window painted at night is most difficult to apprehend. Matisse's use of black in the center of the canvas, as both a pure color and as the subject of the painting, was revolutionary. Diebenkorn was able to see the painting for the first time in a Matisse retrospective held at the UCLA Galleries.
Every so often during the Ocean Park years, Diebenkorn would change his palette from the lyrical colorations evocative of sun and sea to a very dark one of deep grays and blues. Like the Open Window, Ocean Park #26 is a view out of a window at night. It presents a complex structure similar to the indoor-outdoor compositions the artist made in the late 1950s, like Woman in Profile, 1958 (Collection San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). The interior light of the studio, reflected on the subtly toned white surfaces of the walls surrounding the window and on the undulating curve of the wood-sided chair in the lower right quadrant, contrasts starkly with the dark gray of the night outside. The window is divided by a strong vertical line (the sash of the window frame, or a telephone pole outside), and by diagonals of light reflecting from telephone wires or the peaked roofs of houses nearby. The vertical line seems to lock the composition squarely to the flat picture plane, while the diagonals set up a visual tension, indicating recession to a deeper space. The varying shades of gray are used as Matisse used his black--that is, as hue, not as a value or simply for shading. The pentimentti, the vigorous working and reworking of the surface, is typical of Diebenkorn's method of searching for an overall complexity and allowing the battleground of the canvas to retain the signs of the artist's struggle to reach resolution, where "the painter finds himself freed and his emotion exists complete and separate from him and his effort" (ibid.).
One of the paintings by Matisse that made a strong impression on Diebenkorn and particularly affected the conception of Ocean Park #26, was Open Window, Collioure, 1914. This enigmatic painting was as close to total abstraction as Matisse ever came, and until one sees the title, the subject of an open window painted at night is most difficult to apprehend. Matisse's use of black in the center of the canvas, as both a pure color and as the subject of the painting, was revolutionary. Diebenkorn was able to see the painting for the first time in a Matisse retrospective held at the UCLA Galleries.
Every so often during the Ocean Park years, Diebenkorn would change his palette from the lyrical colorations evocative of sun and sea to a very dark one of deep grays and blues. Like the Open Window, Ocean Park #26 is a view out of a window at night. It presents a complex structure similar to the indoor-outdoor compositions the artist made in the late 1950s, like Woman in Profile, 1958 (Collection San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). The interior light of the studio, reflected on the subtly toned white surfaces of the walls surrounding the window and on the undulating curve of the wood-sided chair in the lower right quadrant, contrasts starkly with the dark gray of the night outside. The window is divided by a strong vertical line (the sash of the window frame, or a telephone pole outside), and by diagonals of light reflecting from telephone wires or the peaked roofs of houses nearby. The vertical line seems to lock the composition squarely to the flat picture plane, while the diagonals set up a visual tension, indicating recession to a deeper space. The varying shades of gray are used as Matisse used his black--that is, as hue, not as a value or simply for shading. The pentimentti, the vigorous working and reworking of the surface, is typical of Diebenkorn's method of searching for an overall complexity and allowing the battleground of the canvas to retain the signs of the artist's struggle to reach resolution, where "the painter finds himself freed and his emotion exists complete and separate from him and his effort" (ibid.).