.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
With its bold and expressive application of paint, its subtle yet poignant dislocations of illusionistic space, and its studied tension between abstraction and representation, Interior: With Flowers is a splendid example from an important series of interiors that Diebenkorn executed in the late 1950s and 1960s. After rising to prominence in the previous decade as a painter of abstract compositions, Diebenkorn began in 1955 to devote himself instead to the painting of representational subjects: still-lifes, interiors (with and without figures), landscapes, and cityscapes. In a statement written the same year, the artist explained, "Just as I once believed that spatial ambiguities, intensity spelled out, and infinite suggestibility were necessary properties of painting I now believe that the representations of men, women, walls, windows, and cups are necessary" (quote in J. Livingston, ed., The Art of Richard Diebenkorn, exh. cat., The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1997, p. 53). Looking back in 1969 upon this pivotal moment in his artistic development, Diebenkorn told Gail Scott:
I can remember that when I stopped abstract painting and started figure painting it was as though a kind of constraint came in that was welcomed because I had felt that in the last of the abstract paintings around '55, it was almost as though I could do too much, too easily. There was nothing hard to come up against. And suddenly the figure painting furnished a lot of this (Quoted in G. Nordland, op. cit., p. 88).
In a text written in 1973, Diebenkorn elaborated upon the impetus for his move toward representation:
When I made that change, I wanted my work to be more inclusive. For someone who was intending to continue as an abstract painter I was clearly consorting with the wrong company. David] Park, [Elmer] Bischoff, and I drew regularly from live models and we met often at which time we talked about painting problems--but with a heavy emphasis on their relation to representation. I was without doubt influenced by Park and Bischoff and their figure drawing and I finally took the step in my painting. And what happened as a result of trying to keep my painting conceptions intact while dealing with figure spaces, and the effect that a represented human presence had on the mood and flavor of my work, was, for me exciting and compelling (Quoted in ibid., p. 88).
The present picture is indeed compelling; a bold and experimental depiction of an intimate, enclosed interior space. In the foreground is a large table-top which holds an oblong serving tray and a vase of brightly colored flowers, poised precariously at the table's edge. The viewer looks across the table and an expanse of indigo-colored carpeting to a neatly made bed draped with a red coverlet. The background of the picture is completely black but for two narrow vertical streaks of white, indicating the light which seeps through a window on either side of a drawn shade. Despite its ostensibly naturalistic subject matter, Interior: With Flowers retains a strong abstract character, and it is this tension between observation and artifice (evident also in the interiors and still-lifes of Bonnard [fig. 1] and of Matisse's Moroccan period [fig. 2]) that lends Diebenkorn's picture its engrossing energy. The sumptuous handling of paint, richly impastoed and expressively applied, draws attention to the material quality of the picture surface; the blocks of color which mark out table, carpet, bed, and wall alternately read as tangible objects and abstract passages of pigment, carefully locked together. The upward tilt of the picture plane and dynamic cropping of the scene, particularly evident in the rendering of the tabletop, further underscore the invented nature of the composition. Eschewing Renaissance perspective, the picture is characterized instead by what one critic has called a "paradoxically unpolished, or ever-so-slightly dislocated, sensibility--a quality one might read as a sort of existential awkwardness" (J. Livingston, op. cit., p. 53). As Diebenkorn himself has commented about pictures like the present one:
I keep plastering it until it comes around to what I want, in terms of all I know and think about painting now, as well as in terms of the initial observation. One wants to see the artifice of the thing as well as the subject. Reality has to be digested, it has to be transmuted by paint. It has to be given a twist of some kind (Quoted in G. Nordland, op. cit., p. 89).
The effect of this "twist" in Interior: With Flowers is to produce the picture's distinct emotional tenor: a peculiar combination of the known and the unknown, reassuringly familiar objects interpreted in a way that renders them enigmatic and allegorically charged.
(fig. 1) Pierre Bonnard, Les oeillets, circa 1921.
Private Collection (Christie's, New York, 13 May 1999, lot 136).
(fig. 2) Henri Matisse, Corbeille d'oranges, 1912.
Muse Picasso, Paris.
I can remember that when I stopped abstract painting and started figure painting it was as though a kind of constraint came in that was welcomed because I had felt that in the last of the abstract paintings around '55, it was almost as though I could do too much, too easily. There was nothing hard to come up against. And suddenly the figure painting furnished a lot of this (Quoted in G. Nordland, op. cit., p. 88).
In a text written in 1973, Diebenkorn elaborated upon the impetus for his move toward representation:
When I made that change, I wanted my work to be more inclusive. For someone who was intending to continue as an abstract painter I was clearly consorting with the wrong company. David] Park, [Elmer] Bischoff, and I drew regularly from live models and we met often at which time we talked about painting problems--but with a heavy emphasis on their relation to representation. I was without doubt influenced by Park and Bischoff and their figure drawing and I finally took the step in my painting. And what happened as a result of trying to keep my painting conceptions intact while dealing with figure spaces, and the effect that a represented human presence had on the mood and flavor of my work, was, for me exciting and compelling (Quoted in ibid., p. 88).
The present picture is indeed compelling; a bold and experimental depiction of an intimate, enclosed interior space. In the foreground is a large table-top which holds an oblong serving tray and a vase of brightly colored flowers, poised precariously at the table's edge. The viewer looks across the table and an expanse of indigo-colored carpeting to a neatly made bed draped with a red coverlet. The background of the picture is completely black but for two narrow vertical streaks of white, indicating the light which seeps through a window on either side of a drawn shade. Despite its ostensibly naturalistic subject matter, Interior: With Flowers retains a strong abstract character, and it is this tension between observation and artifice (evident also in the interiors and still-lifes of Bonnard [fig. 1] and of Matisse's Moroccan period [fig. 2]) that lends Diebenkorn's picture its engrossing energy. The sumptuous handling of paint, richly impastoed and expressively applied, draws attention to the material quality of the picture surface; the blocks of color which mark out table, carpet, bed, and wall alternately read as tangible objects and abstract passages of pigment, carefully locked together. The upward tilt of the picture plane and dynamic cropping of the scene, particularly evident in the rendering of the tabletop, further underscore the invented nature of the composition. Eschewing Renaissance perspective, the picture is characterized instead by what one critic has called a "paradoxically unpolished, or ever-so-slightly dislocated, sensibility--a quality one might read as a sort of existential awkwardness" (J. Livingston, op. cit., p. 53). As Diebenkorn himself has commented about pictures like the present one:
I keep plastering it until it comes around to what I want, in terms of all I know and think about painting now, as well as in terms of the initial observation. One wants to see the artifice of the thing as well as the subject. Reality has to be digested, it has to be transmuted by paint. It has to be given a twist of some kind (Quoted in G. Nordland, op. cit., p. 89).
The effect of this "twist" in Interior: With Flowers is to produce the picture's distinct emotional tenor: a peculiar combination of the known and the unknown, reassuringly familiar objects interpreted in a way that renders them enigmatic and allegorically charged.
(fig. 1) Pierre Bonnard, Les oeillets, circa 1921.
Private Collection (Christie's, New York, 13 May 1999, lot 136).
(fig. 2) Henri Matisse, Corbeille d'oranges, 1912.
Muse Picasso, Paris.