Richard Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn
Anne Appleby
Through January 5 - Richard Diebenkorn: Prints and Proofs + Anne Appleby: Five New Etchings at Crown Point Press. In a poetic coincidence here I am making my final post of 2012 about one of my favorite artists, Richard Diebenkorn. I was interning at SFMOMA just before his massive retrospective there in 1998 and have fond memories of seeing the Ocean Park paintings in person for the first time in that exhibition. I still remember the goosebumps I got standing in front of them, Diebenkorn's gloriously transparent treatment of light and color. He was also an accomplished printmaker, spending much time at Crown Point Press in the '80s and early '90s, and their current show illuminates the complicated processes that went into making some of his most famous images. Hanging next to Green, for example, are five full-size proofs brimming with layers of cut-out paper and shifting ideas that lead to the final aquatint. They even have some of his original printing plates on display. The whole show is a wonderful evocation of CPP's 50(!) years of hosting amazing artists in their studio, and the new series of Anne Appleby's luminous prints out in the hallway gallery is a reminder that history is still being made there.
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