Excerpted From Tyler Green’s Modern Art Notes - February 21, 2008

When I left off yesterday, I was writing about Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park No. 38. More specifically I was trying to perform some kind of archeology on it in an effort to ’solve’ the painting, particularly its dominant diagonal.No. 38 isn’t the only 1971 Diebenkorn in the Phillips’ collection, but it is the only one on view right now. After I got home from my Saturday visit to the Phillips, I dialed-up the museum’s excellent American art-focused website and found the 25-inch-by-18-inch painting at left. It isn’t an exact mirror image of No. 38, but key elements of No. 38 are in the work on paper and are reversed: The V-shape in the upper left of the painting, the twin diagonals, the thin yellow vertical block on the right edge of the canvas, and more.

With absolutely no justification whatsoever, I’m guessing that Diebenkorn made the smaller work before No. 38. With that assumption in place I wondered: Was Matisse’s View of Notre Dame the jumping off point for Diebenkorn’s smaller work, an idea which he developed into No. 38? There are so many similarities between the 1971 work on paper and the 1914 Matisse that I think Diebenkorn used the Matisse as a guide. By the time Diebenkorn painted No. 38, those guide-marks had evolved and the final work is much less about learning from the master, and much more of a classic Diebenkorn. […more]