Untitled

While Diebenkorn's paintings can be divided into three distinct phases, his drawings uncover the constant shift and calibration between abstraction and representation within these periods. They also reveal more clearly the relationship between abstraction and representation and that neither could exist without the other. The representational drawings show how external reality is reshaped (by drawing which is inherently a process of abstraction) into a signification. The abstract drawings show how external reality is invoked by line, even when line is intended as a purely visual stimulant. Thus, the drawings reveal how abstraction and representation inherently coalesce. Since Diebenkorn's career has been a negotiation between these two realms, his drawings are particularly illuminating.

Untitled is a beautifully, heavily worked drawing which exemplifies Diebenkorn's movement between representation and abstraction. The play of light upon the rooftops in the foreground becomes a study of positive and negative spaces, of pattern and texture. Diebenkorn's drawings are indispensable to his paintings, but not because they comprise studies or sketches. In his process of invention, drawing and painting were parallel endeavors. Compared to his paintings, Diebenkorn seemed to think out loud in drawing; indeed they reveal the artist's spontaneity and touch and the unfolding of his intentions and imagination.