“One of the most important hallmarks of the Ocean Park paintings, evident from the very beginning, is that each one creates its own, self-contained chromatic universe, and each functions within that universe in a structurally self-sufficient way. The sheer complexity is unrivaled in the abstract painting of the era. It might well be argued that, in this sense, Mark Rothko takes a distant second place to Richard Diebenkorn.”
With its diaphanous layers of vibrant hues and captivating compositional dynamism, Ocean Park #126, from 1984, stands amongst the finest examples of Richard Diebenkorn’s iconic Ocean Park series. The costal light of his new settings inspired a radical shift from his earlier figurative style and became catalyst for the following two decades. Diebenkorn’s most institutionally acclaimed and influential body of work, the Ocean Park series encapsulates the core of his artistic oeuvre: his genius as a colorist and signature abstract vernacular. Befitting their importance, examples from the Ocean Park series reside in more than forty-five museums worldwide. Having debuted in the critically acclaimed Richard Diebenkorn exhibition at M. Knoedler & Co in the fall of 1985, the present work was acquired in the same year by Donald and Barbara Zucker, who cultivated an unparalleled selection of the artist’s work. Inarguably constituting the apex of this series, Ocean Park #126 is distinguished by its remarkable provenance, architectonic composition and nuanced palette of rich blues, soft oranges and golden yellow.
Color, Light, and Geometry: Decoding Diebenkorn's Ocean Park #126
“Many paths, or path-like bands, in my paintings may have something to do with this experience, especially in that wherever there was agriculture going on you could see process-ghosts of former tilled fields, patches of land being eroded.”
The Ocean Park paintings from this epoch recall the stark diagonals and chromatic vibrancy of his earliest explorations of the form. As the art historian Susan C. Larsen describes of the M. Knoedler & Co exhibition in her Artforum review, “In the spirit of the earliest ‘Ocean Park paintings,’ the works of the past few years are solid and often architectonic; they emphasized construction and their color is generally more saturated than in the ’70s pieces. This structural interest can be seen ... in the most recent group of works, shown in New York in November of ’85, in Ocean Park #126, 1984, its central portion sharply cut by wide diagonals and stabilized by a deep plane of blue at its base.” (Susan C. Larsen, “Cultivated Canvases,” Artforum, Vol. 24, No. 5, January 1986, p. 66-71)
Precisely balanced within a scaffolding of charcoal interstices, the veils of azure blue in the present work anchor the composition, pedestalizing the light blues, set against the shafts of bright yellow, subtle sunset reds and oranges in the upper register. Diebenkorn’s methodical juxtaposition of light and color dexterously illustrates the interplay of coastal light combined with the structured geometry of his Ocean Park studio’s transom windows, which inspired this body of work. Here, Diebenkorn’s line becomes more structured, his pigment becomes more layered, and his forms more impressive. This stylistic development reoriented the emotive focus of the series, heightening the paintings’ intellectual rigor and contemplative power as their structural complexity amplified the introspective resonance of these more elegant compositions. Deeply evocative, Ocean Park #126 captures the essence of a glorious collision of a beach bathed in golden hour light, furls of ocean, and radiant atmosphere, all articulated in the artist’s signature abstract vernacular.
Major 1980s Ocean Park Paintings in Museum collects ions (80+ in.)
In his pioneering approach to abstraction, Diebenkorn remained deeply indebted to his art historical forebearers, particularly the twentieth-century modernists, observing early modernism’s approach towards abstraction in his encounters with the work of Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Piet Mondrian. Diebenkorn visited the Matisse retrospective at the University of California in Los Angeles in 1966, the same year that he moved to Ocean Park and the year prior to beginning his eponymous series. Matisse's brilliant use of color and uncanny capacity to dissolve the distinctions between interior and exterior, between architecture and setting, ignited Diebenkorn's own visual proclivities.
“I went … several t.mes s, to his Ocean Park studio … And he had these transom windows. And you’d look out there and you’d see this little patch [of] blue and green, or the concrete abutments that would come, and you could … see what he was processing and essentializing … You have to have that sense of ambiguity … in order to … drive the painting into something other than something obvious and too predictable.”
The surface of Ocean Park #126 is built up of innumerable washes of color, each layer gently modifying and veiling those beneath. Planes of lustrous pigment are laid thinly and delicately, one atop the other, colored lines of paint are confidently drawn and redrawn, covered and then retraced, elegantly endowing the composition with a depth that reflects Diebenkorn’s strong sense of place and process. For its nuanced palette, composition and skillfully applied layers, Ocean Park #126 is an extraordinary exemplar of Richard Diebenkorn’s most iconic body of work, a series of paintings that solidified the artist’s reputation as among the most influential painters of his generation. Even within this rarified group, Ocean Park #126 is indisputably one of the most visually striking and impressive paintings, possessing a heightened awareness of the symbiotic properties of color and light, enveloping and transporting the viewer to a place bathed in light and pastel hue.
