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Home>Yes No Maybe Introduction>Yes No Maybe Diebenkorn Introduction

# 

Exhibition Introduction

Note to the ReaderAcknowledgments

IntroductionKeithJohnLeslieSelf-Portrait

IntroductionTouched RedGreenCombinationHigh Green Version 1

Introduction17 Drawings by ThoreauSeven Day Diary (Not Knowing)Changes and DisappearancesWhere R=RyoanjiFireThe Missing Stone 75 StonesEninkaStonesWhere There is Where There

IntroductionAnne ApplebyPia FriesDarren AlmondSusan MiddletonJoel FisherBrad BrownTom Marioni

IntroductionMamma AnderssonSol LeWittFred WilsonRobert BechtleKiki Smith

IntroductionJulie MehretuWayne ThiebaudJockum NordströmTomma AbtsNathan OliveiraChris Ofili

IntroductionPat SteirLaura OwensWayne ThiebaudAmy Sillman

# Richard Diebenkorn

Yes, No, Maybe: Richard Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn, *Touched Red*, 1991, installation view

Yes, No, Maybe: Richard Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn, *Touched Red*, 1991*; **Green,*1986: installation view

Yes, No, Maybe: Richard Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn, *Green,*1986, installation view

Yes, No, Maybe: Richard Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn, *Green*,**1986,**and*Combination*,**1981, installation view; John Cage's *75 Stones*and *The Missing Stone*, both 1989, are visible in the gallery beyond

Yes, No, Maybe: Richard Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn, *Combination,*1981, installation view

Yes, No, Maybe: Richard Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn, *Combination,*1981; *High Green Version 1*, 1992: installation view

Richard Diebenkorn at Crown Point Press, Oakland, 1986, photograph by Kathan Brown, Courtesy Crown Point Press

Richard Diebenkorn in the Crown Pointstudio, 1982, photograph by Colin McRae, Courtesy Crown Point Press

Revision was integral to the creative process of Richard Diebenkorn (American, 1922–1993). “I seem to have to do it elaborately wrong and with many conceits first,” he wrote. “Then maybe I can attack and deflate my pomposity and arrive at something straight and simple.” This was more than just a self-deprecating remark. After roughing out a composition and having it printed, Diebenkorn would revise select passages incrementally through numerous stages.

Whether he was working in a purely abstract mode, a figurative mode, or with favored motifs such as clubs and spades, his concerns were largely formal, addressing compositional structure and the relations between lines, shapes, and colors. Diebenkorn set his artistic course to “rightness,” a term he regularly invoked. He navigated by following an intuitive sense of what worked: reassessing and adjusting as he went along, seeking something close to harmony, yet still allowing for “a sudden, surprising contradiction.”

Banner image: Detail, Richard Diebenkorn, *Green* (working proof 7), 1986, color spitbite aquatint, soapground aquatint, and drypoint with pasted-down elements, Kathan Brown, © The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn

Next: Richard Diebenkorn, *Touched Red*, 1991

"Yes, No, Maybe: The Art of Making Decisions," lecture by exhibition curators Judith Brodie and Adam Greenhalgh (audio)Julie Mehretu, artist, in conversation with curator Judith Brodie, Diamonstein-Spielvogel lecture (audio)"An Insider's Perspective," lecture by Kathan Brown, founder of Crown Point Press (audio)

Exhibition tour by curators Judith Brodie and Adam Greenhalgh (audio)

Richard Diebenkorn in the collection of the National Gallery of Art

Crown Point Press prints in the collection of the National Gallery of Art

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