Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years, 1953-1966.
Like all Bay Area fans of Diebenkorn’s über Californian abstract expressionism, I went to see the deYoung partial retrospective (the Ocean Park/LA period of the painter’s life is not included) with high hopes.
And indeed the large show gives us deep access to the painter’s early efforts, his inevitable deKooning experimentation and his evolution into the quintessential visionary of the vast, sweeping coastal vistas of the West. What we don’t find in all of these large-scale, oft shockingly dulled, yellowed, and cracked canvases is a central engine of insight.
We can see how his work evolved—lots of Matisse, Cezanne, and Bonnard influence, lots of pure California consciousness and Bay Area figure painting ambience. But somehow there is a missing center to it all. As if he could not find that elusive point of fullness, the essential “aha!” magic that deKooning had all day long.
The work is enormously appealing to painters who can literally watch the various phases unfold—drawing, gesture, painting, over-painting, and generous organization of huge acres of cobalt blue and terra verte green. A painter’s painter he was. But a quiet melancholy inflects the oeuvre and ultimately drains the joy that a single Matisse can provide in an instant.
My take-away is that painting large enables discoveries of color voodoo unavailable to small, careful works. Also that the deYoung cafe makes a terrific espresso. And the drive back down Highway One leads through a landscape of real world Diebenkorns.
The show @ the deYoung Museum runs through September 29
