A recent recommendation to my YouTube feed that I, in turn, recommend here: Gretchen Diebenkorn’s talk, in 2019, about her father, painter Richard Diebenkorn, at Academy Art Museum in Maryland.. I’ve always admired Diebenkorn’s approach to the enduring question of representation vs abstraction. I find an underlying genius to the dominance that the creative takes over representation in his painting.
Seeing an intimate view on his daily life from the point of view of his daughter has been, for me, inspirational. It’s interesting to hear his daughter’s account of his living space, his studio, and how he lived creatively– creativity seemed to flow into everything he did. From birthday cards, to the overflow of his studio into his living spaces, to minature-Diebenkorn’s for his granddaughter’s dollhouse (pictured here).
