Hook 'em Terps

Were I a teacher, I'd make it a point to take my class to see "Diebenkorn in New Mexico" at the Phillips Collection. It's a show of works dating from the painter's 1950–2 stint in Albuquerque, a surprisingly productive but little-known period in the artist's life during which he completed his Master's degree. Several works from his academic thesis are on display; the works as a whole serve as a sort of thesis, a discrete examination over a defined period during which Diebenkorn confronted one macro problem (the New Mexico landscape) and several issues therein concerning palette and line.

Best of all, everyone knows what Diebenkorn did next, so there's no guessing about what lessons he would take or leave behind. You can reverse engineer from what you know about the artist—to some extent—to arrive at a few transitional moments in his career.

Diebenkorn was already an emerging artist by the time he left the Bay Area for a stint in New Mexico, so it would be wrong to say that the period was marked by discovery. He defined his problems from the start and he set about solving them.

Unfortunately this exhibit will no longer by up by the time I do have a class. Yes! I'll be teaching a graduate colloquium at the University of Maryland for the 2008–9 academic school year. The class will be divided between critiques and a curriculum that's still mostly TBD. I'm grateful to the UM art department for the opportunity. In short order my explanations for long blogging absences will change from "I was at the beach" to "I was grading papers."