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Arts Magazine
Sept 1976
p9

RICHARD DIEBENKORN,
STEPHEN EDLICH,
ROBERT MOTHERWELL

Stephen Edlich, Chord Suite #152, 1976. Mixed media, 44 x 30". Courtesy Gruenebaum Gallery and Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery.

The joint showing of Richard Diebenkorn, Stephen Edlich, and Robert Motherwell at Gruenebaum and Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Galleries makes for an appropriate and skillful alliance. Certain relationships are obvious enough, and because one is unable to ignore art history, it is unlikely that shared inspirations, mentors, and involvements will not be apparent.

   Motherwell and Diebenkorn both delight in luminous, atmospheric colors, share explorations of the relationship of exterior to interior space, and are mutually indebted to Matisse and earlier French painting.  Diebenkorn and Edlich have their scaffolded, angular partitioning. Edlich and Motherwell share references to Cubist collage, a genteel 

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worldliness, and cultivated orality, the former with his exotic coffee sacking, the latter with foreign cigarettes and wines. All three painters emphasize the two-dimensional character of the picture plane as the field for their respective investigations. 

   Though haphazard or spontaneous gesture hardly seem to characterize the more recent work of Motherwell and Diebenkorn, there is something of the exuberance and agitation of the gestural which indicates a shared search in the early generations of Abstract Expressionism. The painter's touch is still valued here. For both men, however, this freedom and energy occurs within a context of controlled and deliberate compositional prudence.

   Motherwell's "U" shaped window motif in his Open Series explores in a more reductive fashion themes similar to those expressed in Diebenkorn's ongoing Ocean Park series: restriction and expansion, freedom and enclosure, the binding of essentially shifty and ambiguous space, and the immediacy of the chalky, restless lines which offset their energetic brush-work. The monochromatic restraint of the Open Series contrasts almost frugally with the structured and finely balanced mapping of the panels which isolate Diebenkorn's color areas. Diebenkorn's debt to the California landscape, as much in evidence in earlier, figurative work such as the Girl on a Terrace (1956) as in the Ocean

Robert Motherwell, In Red with Two Ovals, 1976. Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas, 72 x 36". Courtesy Gruene-baum Gallery and Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery.

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Park series, results at times in an almost literal cartography. His radiant atmosphere is grounded and points to the California coast as its witness, whereas Motherwell, with his saturated hues and minimally encumbered expanses, is mapping the territory of free space, and the play of emotion and intellect within that space.
   
   There is another sense in which "geography," the evocation of things foreign, is alluded to by Motherwell and Edlich. For Motherwell, collaging has been, with some exceptions, the vehicle for celebration of more playful, savory moments. The Gauloise package or French wine label is not simply a wrapping or souvenir to be discarded upon consumption of its contents; it becomes a Proustian evocation of passing smells and delicate, half-remembered tastes.
   
   The coarser elements of Stephen Edlich's rope and coffee sack constructions, called Chord Suite, also suggest foreign associations. They exude the musty odors of cargo holds, exotic ports, and physical labor. The decidedly humble, almost ascetic nature of the materials employed contrasts paradoxically with evidence of a worldling's connoisseurship. An understated hedonism emerges from poverty of the elements. This connoisseurship is that of the Bohemian; of one uncorrupted by a surfeit of luxury yet possessing a cultivated palate, appreciative of foreign and luxurious products. The

Richard Diebenkorn, No. 84, Ocean Park Series, 1975. Oil on canvas, 60 x 60". Courtesy Gruenebaum Gallery and Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery.

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opulence of the formidable gold-leafed frames which contain the work also contributes to the irony. Edlich's sophistication speaks to a social and artistic, albeit Bohemian, ambience. Motherwell's serves more personal and metaphysical end. Diebenkorn, who does not venture into this neck of the woods, emerges the most democratic-no rarified appreciation of luxury products happening here.

   For all three artists there exists an ongoing preoccupation with the serial format. For Diebenkorn, alternations of light, air, season, and atmosphere are explored serially within a structural framework which remains consistent. Though not as meticulous or scientific, his investigations are related to those of Monet in the Rouen Cathedral and the Haystack series. 

   The documentation of feeling and personal history lends itself to an episodic presentation. Motherwell's interior life continues to unfold chapters that read like an autobiography. The title of Stephen Edlich's Chord Suite, aside from punning on the materials, alludes to musical forms: the "Chords" and "Suites" in which a number of elements combine to comprise a "whole."

   There is further justification in this shared space. Motherwell, Diebenkorn, and Edlich represent three generations in a continuing interdependent transmission of inspiration and influence in American art. As problems are resolved, coming into a momentary and tenuous balance, their complexity inevitably births further explorations. This is an organic process and the possibilities are, most likely, inexhaustible.(Gruenebaum, Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, September 22-October 20)
Simon Zalkind

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