Twrkv and Diebenkorn by Tom E. Hinson (Feb 1980)

Left: Richard Diebenkorn in front of his painting Cityscape #1 in the Stanford University artist-in-residence studio, Palo Alto, California, 1963. Photo by Leo Holub. Courtesy of the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. Right: Jack Tworkov with his paintings Boon, Thursday, and Brake I in his Provincetown studio, 1960. Photo by Arnold Newman. © Arnold Newman Properties/Getty Images

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Recent Paintings by Richard Diebenkorn and Jack Tworkov
by Tom E. Hinson

Introduction: On the occasion of the acquisition of major paintings by Jack Tworkov and Richard Dienbenkorn by the Cleveland Museum of Art, Associate Curator Tom E. Hinson published this rare analysis and juxtaposition of the two artists over 40 years ago in “The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art,” 67: 2 (February 1980), 31-40.

Formatting edits to this historic text have been made to adjust to online format. Image rights and permissions have been updated to reflect current information. Permission have been granted from the author and from the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. It should be noted that both Tworkov and Diebenkorn were alive at the time and provided content for this publication.

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Through the acquisition of a number of fine paintings during the past few years, The Cleveland Museum of Art's modern collection provides a more comprehensive view of the art produced during the last two decades. Among this group Ocean Park #109 [1] by Richard Diebenkorn and Knight Series OC #1 (Q3- 75-#2) (Figure 7)[2] by Jack Tworkov have been added to earlier works by these artists already in the collection. Thus, a better understanding and appreciation of the styles and contributions of these two important American painters is possible.

Diebenkorn and Tworkov are separated by cultural, generational, and educational differences. The former was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1922 and grew up in San Francisco. The latter was born in Biala, Poland, in 1900 and came to the United States at the age of thirteen when his family immigrated to New York City. Tworkov educated himself by studying with individual painters, looking at art, and living in New York, a city that became a major center for the visual arts. Graduating from Stanford University and the University of New Mexico with undergraduate and graduate degrees in art, Diebenkorn had a more formal education.

Despite the artists' differing backgrounds, their current works exhibit some similar concerns as well as methods and styles. Both artists are deeply committed to the traditional processes of painting. Neither has succumbed to current fashion but has concentrated instead on methodically investigating the painting issues that interest him-such as pictorial structure, rich surface, incisive drawing, and subtle color. At the same time both have avoided stagnation, changing styles whenever new concepts demanded this.

Left: Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #109, 1978, oil and charcoal on canvas, 100 x 76 in (254 x 193 cm). [Catalogue raisonné no. 4342] Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund and gift of The Cleveland Society for Contemporary Art and an anonymous donor. CMA 79.17 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. Right: Jack Tworkov, Knight Series #1 (Q3-75 #2), 1975, oil on canvas, 90 x 75 in. (228.6 x 190.5 cm). [Catalogue raisonné no. 534] Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH. Purchased with a grant from the NEA and matched by gifts from members of The Cleveland Society for Contemporary Art (1976.102)

In the late 1960s and early l 970s-when the vogue shifted toward simplified composition, anonymous paint application, and limited palette—Diebenkorn and Tworkov continued to create visually complex, engaging, and sensuous paintings with paint, brush, and canvas. Working in series, each painter has relied on intuition, perception, and analysis in examining various combinations that concerned them. In Cleveland's paintings, Ocean Park #109 and Knight Series OC #1 one can discern Diebenkorn's and Tworkov's mutual interest in using a framework of lines to organize the composition and to create the visual tension between the flatness of the canvas and the illusion of space suggested by the spontaneous application of color and pictorial structure. They differ, however, in the specific ways they arrive at composition, texture, and color effects which are always subjective.

Beginning to study art as an undergraduate at Stanford University in 1940, Diebenkorn's education was later interrupted by a three-year tour of duty in the Marines. While stationed outside of Washington, D.C., he made frequent trips to the Phillips Gallery. This great collection-especially the paintings by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Pierre Bonnard-had a lasting influence on him.[3]

In 1946 Diebenkorn entered the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and studied with David Park. Clyfford Still was on the staff, and Mark Rothko taught in the summers of 1948 and 1949. Through contact with these men and their paintings, Diebenkorn gained exposure to the first major American avant-garde movement, abstract expressionism. Upon completion of graduate school in 1952, Diebenkorn taught for a year at the University of Illinois in Urbana before returning to Berkeley in 1953.

Fig 1:
Richard
Diebenkorn

Berkeley #42, 1955, oil on canvas, 57 1/2 x 51 1/2 in. (146 x 130.8 cm). [Catalogue raisonné no. 1478] Contemporary Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art 1968.95.
© Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

During the following two years Diebenkorn 's painting reached the high degree of refinement and quality exemplified by Berkeley #42,[4] done in 1955 (Figure 1), in the collection of the Cleveland Museum. The work of this period can be characterized as gestural, abstract painting with certain indications of a landscape. His spontaneous, intuitive approach produced exuberant, emotionally charged paintings. The composition of Berkeley #42, for example, is organized around broad areas of color balanced by smaller and more active shapes. The color is strong and the drawing, bold. The rich, tactile surfaces are achieved by working materials in a variety of ways, including building up individual brush strokes, taking advantage of fortuitous accidents such as drips and splatters, and incising and scraping the painted surface. References to nature appear in the quality of the light, warm earth colors, and an indication of a horizon line. Diebenkorn's approach to painting at this time demonstrates certain similarities to works by gestural artists working on the East Coast such as Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston. By 1955 Diebenkorn was one of the most accomplished and influential painters on the West Coast.

About this time-as abstract expressionism was gaining acceptance—Diebenkorn began to paint in a representational manner. His friends David Park and Elmer Bischoff were already using mimetic images. Diebenkorn now began to question his own earlier approach to painting, developing a calmer, more studied style."[5] In 1957 Diebenkorn described his changing viewpoint:

All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract. ... A realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.[6]

Fig 2:

Richard
Diebenkorn

Woman Wearing a Flower, 1958, oil on canvas, 26 x 22 in. (66 x 55.9 cm). [Catalogue raisonné no. 2532] Contemporary Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art 1965.14.
© Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

Even though his painting now contained representational imagery, the expressive brush strokes, thick paint, drips, and overall quality remained abstract-expressionist in character. While painting in this style, Diebenkorn produced an interesting, varied body of work ranging from figures in interior and exterior settings to simple, but strikingly composed still lifes and landscapes. He developed the formal elements in these representational paintings to their fullest. The Museum's Woman Wearing a Flower from 1958 (Figure 2)[7] is indicative of this approach. Shapes of flat color, freely applied, provide a loose structure forming the figure of a woman.

In 1966, after teaching sporadically for a number of years in the San Francisco area, Diebenkorn moved to southern California to become a professor of art at the University of California in Los Angeles. He set up his studio in a section of Santa Monica called Ocean Park and, a year later, started a new series of paintings taking their name from the studio's location. Despite Diebenkorn's long-standing interest in landscape, the Ocean Park series does not refer to a specific topography, although the name indicates that the paintings may take their inspiration from his environment-be it his studio, the surrounding landscape, or the climate. Whatever the paintings' contents, they are subsidiary to Diebenkorn's concern with the formal elements of pictorial structure, color, drawing, paint surface, and suggested light and space.

For Diebenkorn's work, Matisse, and to a lesser degree Bonnard, provided precedents. The influence of Matisse's geometrical compositional structuring, painterly qualities, and sensual use of color are apparent.8 Another source of inspiration for Diebenkorn is the severe, structurally ordered grid paintings of Piet Mondrian, as seen in the Museum's Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue (Figure 3).[9] Both artists share an interest in clearly defining a painting's corners and edges and in balancing large, central areas with smaller ones placed at the perimeter of the canvas.

In beginning a new painting Diebenkorn first establishes the composition using a system of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines. Clearly, the placement of the framework is determined by trial and error. In a painting like Ocean Park #27, dated 1970 (Figure 4), lines become shapes of varying width and are positioned towards the center of the canvas. But in Ocean Park # 109 the lines and the resulting narrow rectangular shapes are concentrated around the edges of the canvas, leaving a large central shape. This central form is balanced by thin rectangles with the majority of them grouped together at the canvas's top and left side. There is a clearly defined diagonal in the upper left portion of the canvas, while other diagonals in the central shape have been removed leaving only traces of their existence. The large central shape is viewed as a single rectangle. However, hints of numerous rectilinear forms whose outlines have been painted out add complexity to this shape.

Fig 3: Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) Compositions with Red, Yellow, and Blue, 1927, oil on canvas, 19 1/2 x 19 1/2 in. (49.5 x 49.5 cm). Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art 67.215. © Mondrian / Holtzman Trust

Fig 4: Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #27, 1970, oil and charcoal on canvas, 100 x 80 in. (254 x 203.2 cm). [Catalogue raisonné no. 4016] Collection of the Brooklyn Museum. Gift of The Roebling Society and Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Blatt and Mr. and Mrs. William K. Jacobs, Jr. © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

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Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #109, 1978, oil and charcoal on canvas, 100 x 76 in (254 x 193 cm). [Catalogue raisonné no. 4342] Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund and gift of The Cleveland Society for Contemporary Art and an anonymous donor. CMA 79.17 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

At times Diebenkorn uses intense, opaque colors while other canvases are monochromatic. The latter is the case with Ocean Park #109, where Diebenkorn enlivens his grays with traces of violet, blue, and green, along with the blue framework. The grays cover up underlying shapes of pure color such as the horizontal bands of blue, green, and red in the upper portion of the painting. The opalescent color scheme is tightly controlled and balanced through the placement, amount, and intensity of the hues employed.

The painterly brush stroke of Diebenkorn's earlier work has been relinquished here for a broader handling of thinner layers of paint. However, the surface is still scrubbed and reworked.

Color plays an important role in creating a visual tension between the illusion of space and the two-dimensional character of the canvas. The luminous, atmospheric qualities of the surface-achieved by varying areas of dense, opaque hues with overlapping, translucent veils of color-help to create this suggestion of space. The placement of the linear framework near the canvas's edges, on the other hand, clearly establishes the painting's flatness. The compressing effect of the exterior lines on the central shape is another cause of surface tension.

Diebenkorn's effort to arrive at a balanced and tightly unified composition without sacrificing fluidity of brushwork can be clearly seen. Many of the artist's decisions are dimly visible on the surface, testifying to his struggle to complete the painting. The final result is a complex and engaging canvas with a quiet and somber look.

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Fig. 5:
Jack Tworkov

Crest, 1958, oil on canvas, 75 x 59 in. (190.5 x 149.8 cm) [Catalogue Raisonné 468] Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1962.33. © Estate of Jack Tworkov / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

With the addition of one of his more geometric canvases of the past thirteen years, Jack Tworkov is now well represented in the Museum collection. His initial contact with art came in high school in a mechanical drawing class. He majored in English while attending Columbia University from 1920 to 1923 and upon leaving Columbia studied art seriously at the National Academy of Design, the Art Students League, and in summers in Provincetown. He worked with such artists as Ivan G. Olinsky, Charles Hawthorne, Guy Pene du Bois, Boardman Robinson, and Ross Moffett.

During the early years of his career, Tworkov did representational paintings while supporting himself by teaching occasionally and working in government arts programs. His subjects were still lifes, portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes that were strongly influenced by European art, especially Paul Cezanne's painted surfaces so independent of their represented images and structured by small color planes built of broad brush strokes.

A more important influence on the maturation of Tworkov's style was his postwar friendship with a group of New York artists in the first generation of abstract expressionists. Among themselves they discussed a wide range of topics from art to Marxism and from psychoanalysis to existentialism.

As time progressed Tworkov's work became more painterly, spontaneous, and abstract until all references to figures, landscapes, or myths were obliterated. By the mid-1950s Tworkov allowed his subconscious to provide the impetus for creation while he took advantage of accidents and random ideas. The work of these years is characterized by unconstrained, vigorous brush strokes of bright colors creating a textured surface and suggesting an underlying grid-as can be seen in the Museum's painting, Crest, done in 1958 (Figure 5).[10]

Unlike many of the practitioners of abstract expressionism, Tworkov gradually became dissatisfied with his spontaneous painting style. "By the end of the fifties," he stated, "I felt that the automatic aspect of Abstract-Expressionist painting of the gestural variety, to which my painting was related, had reached a stage where its forms had become predictable and automatically repetitive. Besides, the exuberance which was a condition at the birth of this painting could not be maintained without pretense forever."[11] Tworkov now felt a need for an a priori notion of structure within which he could work. "I often thought of it in the same sense as a painter who sets up a still life. The outside given doesn't determine the final outcome of his painting, is psychologically not very significant, and doesn't have to receive any emotional content."[12] Tworkov decided to use geometry as his beginning point, although he still relied heavily on intuition and spontaneity in the painting process.

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Fig. 6: Jack Tworkov, Q1-75 #4, 1975
oil on canvas, 72 x 72 in. (182.9 x 182.9 cm) [Catalogue raisonné no. 746] Collection of Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York

Fig 7: Jack Tworkov, Knight Series OC #1 (Q3-75 #2), 1975, oil on canvas, 90 x 75 in. (228.6 x 190.5 cm) [Catalogue raisonné no. 534] Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH. Purchased with a grant from the NEA and matched by gifts from members of The Cleveland Society for Contemporary Art (1976.102)

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Around 1965 Tworkov's work began to undergo major stylistic changes. He began replacing primary colors with a limited palette, primarily of grays; in recent years more vibrant colors—pinks, mauves, blues, yellows-have crept into his paintings. His large, painterly brush stroke became smaller and more regular, repeatable and controllable. He no longer approached the blank canvas spontaneously but began with planned sketches.

 A linear framework based on geometry now provides the structure for his unified compositions. From simple geometric compositions he has evolved more complex ones with illusions of space as seen in his painting Q1-75-#4 of 1975 (Figure 6). In many of Tworkov's geometric works, he has mathematically divided the canvas to arrive at his compositions. For the Knight Series paintings, he has relied on the moves of a knight in a chess game to suggest the composition. In Knight Series OC #1 (Figure 7) the composition is based on small squares formed by a grid of horizontal and vertical lines; a square field of 64 units (or chess board) is then defined.

Within that field, an abstract image is created through Tworkov's program of moving the knight. The tilted image can be understood as either a single, large architectonic form with a jutting rectilinear contour or as a group of individual, contiguous shapes.

 Tworkov arrived at this image by first placing a green dot in the center of the square of the chessboard on which the knight would be found at the beginning of a game-back row and two spaces over from the end. He then positioned a second dot by following the moves of the knight-one unit to the right or left and two spaces at a right angle (or two spaces and then one). These two dots were connected by a straight line, and then a third dot was positioned and connected in the same manner. He continued in this way except for certain contingencies. When, for example, the straight lines can go no farther within the square representing the board, a right-angle move is then made in order to start another line; and when it is not possible to make a ninety-degree turn, a change in course of another angle is made. An inflexible rule is that a dot can never revisit a square previously occupied. Clearly, Tworkov may do many sketches until he arrives at the final image.

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Fig 8:

Jack Tworkov

Knight Series #8 (Q3-77 #2), 1977, Oil on canvas, 90 x 72 in. (228.6x 182.9 cm) [Catalogue raisonné no. 151] Collection of the Estate of Jack Tworkov, New York

In other Knight paintings-such as Knight Series #8 (Q3- 77-#2), done in 1977 (Figure 8), Tworkov does not designate a square field in which to place his image. Since he is not interested in duplicating a chess game, he utilizes the entire rectangular canvas, giving him more compositional possibilities.

In the Museum's new painting, Tworkov has limited his final color scheme primarily to grays with some greens and violets. However, there are layers of colorful underpainting, beginning with orange. The lighter and brighter colors peek through at various points all over the canvas, creating a luminous effect. Each of the three geometric shapes has its own color scheme.

Ever since Tworkov eliminated subject matter and all references to nature, gesture has been an important aspect of his work. He has commented:

I believe that is among the few things left that can still be serious in art, this trace of the hand. It is the way a man reveals so much of himself, just precisely by the way he handles the paint, the way he treats the material, by the way he permits its flow or contains its flow. There is a whole range of thought and feeling in that process. [13]

In Knight Series OC #1 Tworkov's irregular strokes of parallel lines honor the outlines of the grids and the exterior line bordering the central image, thus helping to define the image and the field within which it is placed.

Within Knight Series OC #1 the crisscrossing white lines of the central image establish overlapping planes. At the same time, the thinness of the white line makes those overlapping planes difficult to discern. The placement and color of each of the three shapes gives a slight indication of planes which appear to move forward or recede in space, but the clearly visible grid makes the viewer constantly aware of the two dimensionality of the canvas.

Although there are similarities between the paintings by Diebenkorn and Tworkov, there are differences. In Knight Series OC #1, as in Diebenkom's Ocean Park #109, for example, visual tension exists between the flat surface and the illusion of space. Yet, the degree of tension is somewhat less in Tworkov's painting. Since the mid- to late 1960s both have relied on a linear structure to organize their compositions, but Diebenkorn's structure is arrived at intuitively, while Tworkov uses drawings. Although less gestural than before, Tworkov has retained the distinctive brush strokes from his paintings of the 1950s and the early 1960s, while Diebenkorn has diminished his painterly stroke to obtain a more even surface quality. Tworkov's strokes add to the overall surface richness, whereas Diebenkorn's rich surface is achieved by overlapping translucent planes of color. The echoes of earlier decisions add texture to his surface. Indeed, the whole process of painting is more visible in Diebenkorn's painting. However their methods may differ, both Tworkov and Diebenkorn are interested in the same end-creating paintings as a feast for the eye.

TOM E. HINSON
Associate Curator of Modern Art
Cleveland Museum of Art

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1. CMA 79.17 Ocean Park #109. Oil on canvas, 100 x 76 inches (254 x 193 cm.), initialed and dated, lower right: RD 78. Richard Diebenkorn, American, b. 1922. Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund and gift of The Cleveland Society for Contemporary Art and an anonymous donor. Exhibitions: M. Knoedler & Co .. Inc., New York, I 979: Richard Diebenkorn, p. 9, repr.; The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980: Year in Review (cat. CMA Bulletin, LXVII [March I 980]), no. 54, repr.

2. CMA 76.102 Knight Series OC #1 (Q3- 75-#2). Oil on canvas, 90 x 75 inches (228.5 x 190.5 cm.), 1975. Jack Tworkov, American (born Poland), b. 1900. Purchased with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and matched by gifts from members of The Cleveland Society for Contemporary Art. Exhibition: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1977: Year in Review (cat. CMA Bulletin, LXIV [February 1977]), no. 126.

3. Maurice Tuchman. "Diebenkorn's Early Years." in Richard Diebenkorn : Paintings and Drawings, 1943-/976. exhib. cat. (Buffalo: Albright-Knox Art Gallery. 1976). p. 6.

4. CMA 68.95 Berkeley #42. Oil on canvas, 57-1/2 x 51-1/2 inches (146 x 130.8 cm.), initialed and dated, off-center, bottom: RD 55. Richard Diebenkorn. Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art. Exhibitions: Poindexter Gallery, New York. 1956; The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969: Year in Review (cat. CMA Bulletin. LVI [January 1969]). no. 110, repr.; Publications: Arts and Architecture, LXXtll (April 1956), 11, repr.; Ellen Johnson, "Diebenkorn's Woman by a Large Window," Bulletin of Allen Memorial Art Museum, xvi (Fall 1958), 19-23; Allen S. Weller, Art USA Now, ed. Lee Nordness (Lucerne, 1962), p. 370, repr.

5. Gerald Nordland, "The Figurative Works of Richard Diebenkorn." in Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Drawings, 1943-1976. p. 26.

6. Quoted in Louise and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Modern Painting and Sculpture Collected by Louise and Joseph Pulitzer (Cambridge, Mass.: Fogg Art Museum. 1957), p. 31.

7. CMA 65.14 Woman Wearing a Flower. Oil on canvas, 26 x 22 inches (66 x 55.9 cm.), initialed and dated, lower right: RD 58. Richard Diebenkorn. Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art. Exhibitions: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1965: Year in Review (cat. CMA Bulletin, Lil [November 1965]), no. 166, repr.; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 1976: Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Drawings, 1943-1976, cat. no. 34, repr. p. 68 (traveled to Cincinnati Art Museum; Corcoran Gallery of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and The Oakland Museum); Publication: Art in America, (May-June 1966), 47, repr. in color.

8. Robert T. Buck, Jr., "The Ocean Park Paintings." in Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Drawings. 1943-1976, pp. 43-46.

9. CMA 67.215 Composition with Red. Yellow, and Blue. Oil on canvas, 20-1/8 x 20-1/8 inches (51.1 x 51.1 cm.), initialed and dated, lower center (in blue area): PM '27. Piet Mondrian, Dutch, 1872- 1944. Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art.

10. CMA 62.33 Crest. Oil on canvas, 75 x 59 inches (190.5 x 149.8 cm.), 1958. Jack Tworkov. Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art. Exhibitions: Kassel. Germany: Documenta 11; Seattle World's Fair Exposition, 1962: Century 21 Exhibition; The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1962: Year in Review (cat. CMA Bulletin, [November 1962]), no. 158, repr.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1964: One-man Show (traveled to The Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, D.C.; The Pasadena Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and The Poses Institute of Fine Arts, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts). Publication: Edward B. Henning, "In Pursuit of Content," CMA Bulletin. L (October 1963), 231-232, repr.

11. Jack Tworkov, "Notes on My Paintings," Art in America, LXI (September 1973), 69.

12. Discussion with Tom Hinson, Provincetown. Massachusetts, I 9-20 September 1975. Quoted in Jack Tworkov: Recent Paintings and Drawings. 1968-1975 (Cleveland: The New Gallery, 1975), unpag. 5.

13. Phyllis Tuchman, "An Interview with Jack Tworkov," Artforum, IX (January 1971), 67.

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Endnote from the original: THE BULLETIN OF THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART. (USPS 075-960). Volume LXVII. Number 2, February 1980. Published monthly, except July and August, by The Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Boulevard at University Circle. Cleveland, Ohio 44106. Subscriptions: $8.00 per year for Museum members; $10.00 per year for non-members. Single copies: $1.00. Copyright 1980 by The Cleveland Museum of Art. Second-class postage paid at Cleveland, Ohio. Museum photography by Nicholas Hlobeczy; design by Merald E. Wrolstad.