The majority of works Richard Diebenkorn produced never left his possession, and many of these drawings and paintings on paper were never reproduced or seen until the publication of Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné (Yale University Press, 2016). Co-Editor Jane Livingston spent over a decade sequencing more than 5,000 of the artist's unique works for the publication, including: sketches; drawings; paintings on paper, board, canvas; and sculptural objects, which she likens to “throwing a deck of cards into the air and trying to make sense of them.” Livingston will present approximately 200 of these paintings and drawings that remained private and hidden for years, from the bright and light to the humanist and existentialist—a surprising “underbelly” of Diebenkorn that reveals the anxiety and difficulty, not simply the joy, that the American artist encountered in his life and process.
Jane Livingston's professional relationship with Richard Diebenkorn began in the 1970s, when she purchased an Ocean Park painting on behalf of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where she served as Curator of 20th-Century Art. At LACMA her exhibitions included the first major Bruce Nauman show, and the landmark Art and Technology, with Maurice Tuchman. In 1975, as Associate Director and Chief Curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., she hosted a traveling Diebenkorn retrospective. She went on to organize a Diebenkorn retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York in 1997, the highly acclaimed The Art of Richard Diebenkorn, and authored the accompanying exhibition catalogue. Livingston is an independent curator and the author of many books on painting, sculpture, and photography. She is the Co-Editor of Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné and is an essayist in the publication.
This program made possible by the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation.
Photo by Whitney Legge
