Interview
with Richard Diebenkorn
Conducted by Susan Larsen
1985 May 1, 2 & 7 and 1987 December 15
The
following oral history transcript is the result of
a tape-recorded interview with Richard Diebenkorn
on May 1, 2 & 7, 1985 and December 15, 1987. The
interview was conducted by Susan Larsen for the Archives
of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Richard
Diebenkorn and Susan Larsen have reviewed the transcript
and have made corrections and emendations. The reader
should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript
of spoken, rather than written, prose.
Interview
RD: Richard Diebenkorn
SL: Susan Larsen
Session
1
Interview
with Richard Diebenkorn
Conducted by Susan Larsen
1985 May 1
[Tape 1, side A]
SL:
So, I think we will start at the beginning, and I
just wanted to check certain things that have been
common knowledge, but just to affirm with you. You
were born in Portland?
RD: Yes.
SL:
In 1922?
RD:
Yes.
SL:
And your family had been there a long time or a short
time?
RD:
Short time. They were, my mother was a Californian.
She was born in San Diego. And my father came here
from Cincinnati in nineteen-o-something-or-other.
His business moved him to Portland briefly to start
a new office. They eventually became a West Coast
company. And he got the office going in Portland,
and it took years, I think, and then they moved back
to California, back to San Francisco.
SL:
Is that where they met and got together?
RD:
I think they met in Los Angeles.
SL:
And what sort of business did your father. . . .
RD:
Hotel and restaurant supply company.
SL:
Oh.
RD:
And it was the leading restaurant and hotel supply
company on the West Coast. And what else?
SL:
Okay, that was. . . . I just wondered.
RD:
This [the microphone--Ed.] is close enough?
SL:
I think so. So, your family moved to San Francisco
then in 1924? Is that about right?
RD:
About, yes. '24 or '25. I'm not just certain of the
dates.
SL:
Okay. And you were the only child?
RD:
Yes.
SL:
And did you have a family surrounding you? Cousins
and grandmother and aunts and uncles.
RD:
Grandmother, on my mother's side, and grandfather,
on my father's side. So I. . . . My mother and father
and me. And my grandmother I saw a lot of, especially
during the summer.
SL:
This was Florence Stephens?
RD:
Florence Stephens, yes.
SL:
You've mentioned her. Many people have mentioned her.
She was an important person in your young life, I
gather.
RD:
Extremely.
SL:
She was the one who encouraged your interest in art
and reading and many other things?
RD:
Yes.
SL:
She sounded like an interesting lady. From what I
gather she went back to school in her thirties and
was very active in. . . .
RD:
She became a lawyer, and, well, she was a painter.
There's a painter--I mean, painting in the kitchen
that I'll show you later of hers. She was a poet,
poetess, I guess. Is that a word? No. [laughter]
SL:
Was she very lively, or quiet?
RD:
Very lively. Irish-type disposition, since she was
born in Dublin. She came to this country in the. .
. . She came to San Francisco in about 1870.
SL:
My.
RD:
And lived on Telegraph Hill.
SL:
(chuckles)
RD:
In her later years, she had a radio program in San
Francisco, a book review program.
SL:
Was she involved with new literature, or was it classics?
RD:
Well, new for the time, I guess. She wrote. She wrote
stories and I think she got about a third of them
published. She always had something out with, sweating
out the response in the mail.
SL:
I see.
RD:
What else about her?
SL:
Did she have you writing stories? Drawing, from an
early age?
RD:
Well, it wasn't exactly that she had me doing it,
but she was very appreciative. I think I did the painting
on my own, and I think that in a backhanded way, my
father was important to the beginnings of my drawing,
because I think Richard was totally occupied, and
no trouble at all when he had shirt cardboards to
draw trains, pictures of locomotives on. And so I
really can't remember when I wasn't engaged in that
activity for some part of the day--of drawing.
SL:
That's what you started on, shirt cardboards?
RD:
Shirt cardboards. I remember they were chipboard surface
on one side, that, just, I hated, and the other side
was a smooth white, and that I liked to draw on.
SL:
I know just what you're talking about. So you would
spend the summers with your grandmother and. . . .
For a short period of time, or long period of time.
RD:
Well, the whole summer.
SL:
The whole summer?
RD:
Yes. She had a small house in Woodside, California.
And there was just wild country there then. And so
I was loose in the forest [or, and] the hills with
bow and arrow or whatever.
SL:
Really, oh. What else did you like to do besides painting
and drawing?
RD:
Well, I guess I had a pretty good fantasy life during
those summers, because I remember I carved--a couple
of summers; I must have been eleven and twelve--and
carved swords and made shields, and emblazoned them
with insignia and. . . .
SL:
Just like King Arthur and that kind of thing?
RD:
Sure. Yeah.
SL:
That was also something you read, I gather, too.
RD:
Oh, yes. It just occurred to me, talking about my
grandmother, I wanted to correct something in this
book [Richard Diebenkorn Paintings and Drawings 1943-1976,
catalogue of Albright-Knox exhibition,1976.--Ed.].
They made a very funny mistake. Or a mistake that's
very, very misleading. If I were reading it, I wouldn't
know what to make of this. It says, it's involved
with my grandmother's law activity.
SL:
Is this something that you. . . .
RD:
Oh, here. "Mrs. Stephens had returned to school
at age 35 to study law. . . . during World War II
took on 28 cases defending German-Americans whose
civil rights had been violated, and won them all."
Well, the mistake there is the "II"; it
should be World War I, obviously, and there wasn't
that kind of defense of German-Americans in World
War II, and there was no. . . . I don't think they,
there was any requirement for it, either, that it
was a very serious proposition in World War I, and
she was sympathetic with the underdog.
SL:
Um hmm. It would be more likely the Japanese-Americans
in World War II.
RD:
Yeah, yes.
SL:
Also it didn't make sense if she came to San Francisco
in 1870.
RD:
No.
SL:
I mean, how could she be 35 in World War II?
RD:
Yes, exactly. I thought that came out in a very puzzling
way.
SL:
Thank you! [cookies are offered--Ed.]
RD:
Oh, yes.
SL:
Thank you very much.
Another
voice: Don't let the dogs see the cookies.
RD:
Oh. We have cookies.
SL:
Oh, okay. That's a magic word always with me. Something
I hadn't asked you is what kind, nationality of name
is Diebenkorn?
RD:
Well, I'd always understood it was German, and my
father's grandfather came to this country in the,
during the Civil War. I say that because they were
going to land in New York and they had to go around
the Mississippi, come up the Mississippi River. And
he died going up the Mississippi River, so my grandfather,
who was five, and his mother went to Cincinnati and
she immediately remarried someone named Howard. And
his. . . . Grandfather kept the name Diebenkorn and.
. . . But because of that, really a lot of history
was lost that the. . . .
SL:
Um hmm, the family. . . .
RD:
. . . that that, that my father's, my great-grandfather
would have. . . . My great-grandmother immediately
got involved with a different family and so on. But
then, so it was, all we knew was that it was a German
name, and we knew that history of coming to Cincinnati,
and that was all. But then, Phyllis and I were interested
to find out really for sure, and we, so we went [to]
Europe, and. . . . It was shortly after my father
died that my mother had a friend who was Dutch and
had been born in Holland and told my mother that she
had grown up very close to a community, very small
community named Diebenkorn.
SL:
Ah hah!
RD:
And so my mother informed--she was getting a little
bit on, then, in age--but she informedPhyllis and
me one evening, when we had her for dinner, that "It's
possible that your name is Dutch," that because
of so-and-so who said that. So this sort of threw
us in a quandary and it made us--made me--more than
determined than ever to figure out what. . . . So
we were going to take this trip, and we were--Holland,
Germany, Austria, Italy. First time we had done that
part of Europe, and. . . . I'm making too long a story
of this. But at any rate, we traveled through Holland
and Kroller-Muller Museum and all those treats, and
we just had this gorgeous time. But all the time,
from south of Holland, when we'd stay someplace, I'd
look in the telephone book and. . .
SL:
Did you find any?
RD:
I found all sorts of names that were very much like
it, especially in central, central-eastern Holland.
And Holland is sort of a vertical country, and central
and eastern. And the names would be right except for
one word [means letter--Ed.] here and there. Very,
very close. So then finally, then when we got to the
south, the names changed character and so [I] sort
of gave it up. Well, this isn't true. Oh! Even asked
there about a community of Diebenkorn in, and the
people who should have known, would have known, said
that, "We have no record of anything like that."
So then we went on around the coast into Germany and
I just, I wasn't even, I'd given up the project, and,
but then we went to Hamburg, and we were in the hotel
there, and I passed this lobby and this large telephone
thing--telephone books and girls sitting around answering
questions--and so I went up and looked in the book,
and no names like it [but spelled differently--Ed.]
at all. But there were four Diebenkorns in the. .
. .
SL:
Perfect, just the same?
RD:
Yeah. Yeah, God! And no names like them really either.
And this gave, made my flesh sort of crawl, because
I'd never seen my name other than referring to me
or my family.
SL:
Yes.
RD:
So, well, to make a long story short, I called one,
and the person was very hospitable, had us for tea--I
think it was coffee--and this man, who was my age,
had his son and his wife-to-be, who was an engineer,
and it was all very nice. And they went, they, I guess
the son was there because he and his fiance both spoke
English. So we got to talking about the name, and
they had recalled the--or the man who was my age had
recalled hearing about a great-grandfather who had
gone to America and disappeared.
SL:
Oh, is that right? Fabulous! That must have, it very
likely could be.
RD:
Yeah, yeah. And then they talked about the name and
they said that the name originated in Sweden. It was
in a dialect. The name meant the grain stacked in
the shape of a house. You know, when you see. . .
This is a Diebenkorn, but it was spelled different,
but I mean, you know, it was essentially. . . .
SL:
Very interesting.
RD:
And these, they were farmers, the Diebenkorns, and
they came in the, I guess they were at least 17th
century or late 16th. It was when Sweden was occuping
the northern part of Germany, Prussia, after the Thirty
Years War, I guess. At any rate, they came down there
about that time, and in [Mecklenberg]. I'm really
answering your question, aren't I?
SL:
That's fine.
RD:
Then some of them moved, or one branch of the family
moved from Mecklenberg to Hamburg, and they in Hamburg--the
people we were talking to--said that there are a lot
of Diebenkorns in Mecklenberg, whereas there are just
very few, just this single branch of the family in
Hamburg. So the mysterywas cleared up once and for
all.
SL:
That's great.
RD:
I don't know about my mother's friend who had the
Dutch. . . .
SL:
Maybe she had the German Mecklenberg. . . .
RD:
And I had always understood that Diebenkorn meant
cornfield, but apparently the derivations didn't.
. . .
SL:
Much better. (chuckles) I looked up at that little
house-like thing up there. It's sort of like a, almost
like a. . . . Oops. [referring to dog?--Ed.]
RD:
But in the. . . . I had told the photographer, Leo
[Holub] . . . . Do you know him?
SL:
No, I don't.
RD:
Oh. He's from Northern California, photography. He's
very, very good one. Worked for Stanford for a long
time. Bruce, no! [speaking to dog--Ed.]
[Break
in taping]
SL:
So, well. So that cleared up some of the mysteries,
there. So, as a child in school, were you focused
on art, or did you have other things that were more
central to your growing-up time?
RD:
Well, the art was, for me, was always something I
did privately. During school I never, I avoided art
classes because just to look in at high school, to
look in and see what was going on just didn't interest
me at all. It wasn't art that I was interested in;
it was drawing and painting, which I had really not
made a real, I had no real understanding of drawing
and painting as art. I have an understanding of drawing
and painting in terms of this activity of mine, you
see.
SL:
Um hmm. Did you, had you gone to museums at that point,
and had a sense of what was perhaps different than
craft kinds of things?
RD:
Well, yes. [hesitant--Ed.] My grandmother took me.
I remember she took me to the Van Gogh show in, at
the Palace, California Palace of the Legion of Honor,
and that must have been around 1934, somewhere in
there.
SL:
Yes, the one that came from the Museum of Modern Art?/
RD:
I think it was. . . . Possibly. But my impression
is that it was. . . . Was that about that time?
SL:
I think it was. I mean, I could be wrong. We could
look up and find out.
RD:
It could have been that show, then. What occurs to
me in regard to that--I'll get off the track for a
moment--as a child going to that show with my grandmother,
it was fun. Paintings--I don't know if I really got
with it, but it was a memorable day. And the thing
that interested me, that is very fresh in my recollection,
were the groups of people being taken through that
exhibition. Groups of--with a guide, who would be
speaking--twenty to thirty people, as we see today,
and. . . .
SL:
How did you feel about that?
RD:
The people were laughing--in most of the groups--laughing
at the pictures! And I remember one--and I remember
this rather clearly too--I listened to one of the
men, one of the guides talking to the group, and he
was contributing to the fun and games about this crazy
painting that was on the wall!
SL:
Really!
RD:
Yes! As late as. . . . So when the rush to print postcards,
books, reproductions, you know, framed pictures, vanGogh's
sunflowers for everybody's house, when that occurred--you
know, it must have happened very shortly after that.
. . .
SL:
Yes.
RD:
. . . because the public at that time clearly was
very perplexed by. . . .
SL:
What did your grandmother think about the show?
RD:
She was interested. When you see her picture in the,
she was, did some oil painting, but mostly worked
in watercolor, and you'll see that it's pretty traditional
watercolor.
SL:
But so she presented it to you in a positive way?
RD:
So I think it was. . . . Yeah, this was something
to stimulate both of us.
SL:
Yes.
RD:
And I'm sure it did [stimulate--Ed.] her, and, because
she wasn't laughing with. . . .
SL:
Um hmm.
RD:
And I really kind of forget what my responses were
to the pictures themselves.
SL:
They could seem rather. . . . I would think they might
seem very bright and overwhelming to someone who hadn't
seen them.
RD:
Oh yes, and I think we forget, we take for granted
the kind of distortion that the Expressionists, the
expressionist kind of distortion. This is something
we assume now, and I think that that recently those
assumptions were not, one did not exaggerate or distort.
And in line with that, I recall seeing Cezanne for
the first time, and it was I think shortly before
I went to college, actually. I read Somerset Maugham's
The Moon and Sixpence, and at one point, I remember,
the artist's name, the Gauguin character that was
named. . . . Strickland! Charles Strickland. You read
it.
SL:
Yes.
RD:
And there was a short description of his painting,
which was a little bit like the painter,
Paul
Cezanne.
SL:
Um hmm.
RD:
Well, I was involved with this story, and then so
I wanted to have some idea what Charles Strickland's
painting was like, so I went to the library and got
an art book and, which. . . . I mean, it was the only
one in a large library, black and white reproductions
of Cezanne's pictures. And it was really quite a shock
to me!
SL:
It was.
RD:
The crazy sort of [barenness, bareness] spareness,
and the distortions just hit me very hard. There were
tabletops where I felt apples should roll off the.
. . . And buildings with skewed verticals and horizontals
and backgrounds that. . . . A horizon-line or floor-line
which came in from one side at this level and popped
out at a different level, and. . . . Very disquieting,
shocking, for me. Because my discipline, as a teenager,
had been strictly drawing as craft in terms of accurate
rendition of what's out there, all the logic of how
things sit in relation to their context, and. . .
.
SL:
You had been exposed to things like the work of Howard
Pyle? And N.C. Wyeth?
RD:
Yes.
SL:
Is it at this point that you were looking at things
like that?
RD:
Yeah, I think Pyle and Wyeth came in, oh, from about
age ten onward. On until. . . .
SL:
Did you see them in books, or. . . .
RD:
Hmm?
SL:
Did you see them in books?
RD:
Oh, in books, yeah.
SL:
There weren't any original drawings around?
RD:
I think there weren't any around then. I don't think
there was ever an exhibition of them. They were, it
was a. . . . Scribner's did a series of children's
classics: Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and most of
these books were illustrated by Wyeth. And then Howard
Pyle illustrated--and I think did the writing too,
in archaic style, and the drawings--and illustrated
these books, a whole series on Arthurian legends.
And the drawings related to--they were somewhat stylized--but
related to German 16th-century drawing: Durer, Hans
Baldung.
SL:
Which is, really a somewhat fantastic aspect, versus
the more narrative, realist thing.
RD:
Yes!
SL:
It's as though you have both of those strains going
on, simultaneously.
RD:
Um hmm, yeah. So they, and then. . . . Oh! Pyle did
his marvelous book, the only one that I still have
left, that I've hung onto through the years, and that
was [Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates], and. . . . I'm
sure that both Wyeth and Pyle had a great influence
on some of the good directors, movie directors, who
were after a, realist directors: Ford, who I think
really leaned heavily on, well, Remington, but also
on Wyeth. You can just feel that. And then Pyle also.
Because there was no fantasy in the pirates thing.
Pirates were cool, rough, bad, you know. And deadly.
[said with a smile--Ed.] And there was no. . . .
SL:
Not heroes.
RD:
No romanticizing. There was in a sense, because, a
romanticizing, essentially it's a romantic thing,
but no glossing, no kidding.
SL:
So it was a realist mode in a way.
RD:
Yeah, yeah.
SL:
In a way, you have an intersection of things that
are very basically American in their roots in art.
. . .
RD:
Um hmm.
SL:
. . . and other than this encounter with a few things
that are very European, and an acknowledgement, it
seems, of the difference that there was there.
RD:
With, in so far that we've gone, where do you find
the European in. . . ?
SL:
Well, the van Gogh and the Cezanne and the. . . .
RD:
Oh yes, yeah.
SL:
. . . the distortions that you see there.
RD:
Well, the van Gogh was early.
SL:
Um hmm.
RD:
The Cezanne, though--and that's where I got off the
track, I think--the Cezanne pictures. . . There came
a change--immediately--for me on looking at these.
SL: Really? You could understand it?
RD:
Yeah. These things hit me very, very hard. I didn't
know what to make of them. A little bit repellent
even. But I'm, it's such a lesson to me, having had
this experience. . . .
[Tape
1, side B]
RD:
. . . not really gotten into the taste, into our culture's
taste, at any rate, middle-class America. When I was
a teenager, Cezanne was certainly established in cultural.
. . .
SL:
But he wasn't a household word, or. . . .
RD:
No, no. And I had looked, because of my fascination
with drawing and painting, I was just interested in
drawing and painting wherever I saw it, and so I wasn't
exactly that naive.
SL:
Did you just pick this up on your own? You found the
book and you looked at it and you realized there was
something to it?
RD:
I went to the library and, just to find out who Charles
Strickland's paintings looked like.
SL:
Ah hah!
RD:
And so there was, there was the answer. But the lesson
for me, the thing that I've tried to communicate to
some younger people here and there--and they don't,
I can tell they don't get it--it's been a long time
since you could shock anybody by showing them a Cezanne
or Van Gogh. . . .
SL:
But when you saw this and it disturbed you, I mean,
did you worry over it or did you start immediately
to try to take it apart and find out what was going
on, and how did it make you feel about what you were
doing?
RD:
Oh, I looked at these pictures a lot and puzzled.
I didn't immediately go into my work. Because the
next influence that came along in painting was--let's
see, there was an interim, the longest time in my
whole life that I didn't do any artwork, I mean, drawing
or painting, was my first two years at Stanford. And
my father had sent me there to be a professional lawyer,
doctor, something. And so it wasn't until I enlisted
in the military, but still stayed in college, that
I began to look around away from what I had been put
in school for, which got to boring me quite a bit.
SL:
You weren't. . . . Were you, as you left high school,
had you thought of going into art for a career, or
avocation?
RD:
Well, I thought all along that I'd be a, I wanted
to be an artist, which meant--I think maybe it says
in the book commercial artist or something. I was
emphatic that I was going to continue, or that was
my, what I wanted to do.
SL:
You expressed that, you felt that?
RD:
Yeah. And I'm sure that saying this at age twelve,
my father would smile; saying it at age seventeen,
I think he was starting to get nervous. (laughter)
SL:
Then changed your mind, huh?
RD:
And it was assumed all along in my teenage years that
I'd be going to Stanford and, but of course I was
going for a serious reasons; I wasn't going there
to become an artist.
SL:
Did you know any artists, or did your family know
any artists? Or was it. . . .
RD:
Just my grandmother.
SL:
So it was basically. . . . Did they think of it as
more an avocational thing to do?
RD:
Yeah, um hmm. And I can remember my father telling
me at some point, about the time he started getting
nervous, when I was getting older and older and still
wanting to be an artist, well, I remember a couple
of talks where he would say, "You know, this
drawing and painting thing is just a fine avocation,
and I think you're in an enviable position to have
some, to have this to do in your life as well as what
you really do with your life." (both chuckle)
SL:
Which is not unusual. A lot of parents, I would think,
would. . . . But it is unusual for someone to have
an interest, develop it, stick with it, and express
it that directly at that age.
RD:
Um hmm.
SL:
That seems to be very unusual.
RD:
Yes.
SL:
Especially in the absence of a context that is right
there, that's supporting it.
RD:
Um hmm, um hmm. I never. . . . Look, see, with my
own children, with children of friends that, of these
kids who are of course marvelous artists, and then
that time comes around just about puberty and all
this falls away. They become directed in a totally
different way. And people sort of grow up, beyond
being artists, and I feel fortunate that I didn't
grow up--in that sense, or maybe some other sense
too! (chuckles)
SL:
Well, that's quite remarkable. Were there art courses
at Stanford that you even looked into?
RD:
No, that's where we were. When I, after I had joined
the Marine Corps, still at Stanford. I knew I wasn't
going to be there in school too long, and so I think
I took a little advantage of my father and I enrolled
in some art courses and proceeded to neglect courses
like political science and economics--in fact I got
some big fat flunks in those. And of course my father
was then nervous, but here was his boy who was. .
. .
SL:
Going to the war, probably.
RD:
. . . going to be in the war, and, okay, so he became
permissive at this point, and so I took further advantage
and probably further and further art courses, until
that was just about all I was taking. (laughter)
SL:
Did you. . . . But you hadn't found them that interesting
in high school, though. Was it a different kind of
thing in college?
RD:
Well, in high school, I guess I, for one thing I was
probably a little intimidated. I can remember standing
in the doorway of the art studio at Lowell High School
and looking in, and seeing these people busily working,
professionally, and this was, what they were doing
wasn't at all like the sort of cramped illustrative
thing that I was, did at home. They were doing something
broad and essentially meaningless to me, kind of oversimplified
figure drawings, Diego Rivera influence, and I think
I told somebody or other in an interview that there
were lots of drawings of big pieces of hemp rope that
would have come from Mexican muralists, or dock, longshoreman,
social commentary murals, where there were all these
big coils of heavy. . . .
SL:
Even Stuart Davis has a few of those.
RD:
Yeah, yeah. So this, to draw a piece, to copy a piece
of--or an exaggerated somehow in the way they did--piece
of rope just meant nothing to me, so I stayed away.
But at Stanford it was something different. They had
survey courses, and they had a very limited masters
program, I think only in art history. But they had
studio courses: small, academic, I think you might
say, although the people I encountered were good and
became lasting friends, Dan Mendelowitz.
SL:
You studied with Mendelowitz there?
RD:
Mendelowitz, Dan Mendelowitz.
SL:
Uh huh. He was the art history professor?
RD:
He was one of them; there were three. A man named
Farmer, and a Russian emigre, Victor Arnautoff, who
was a fascinating man.
SL:
And he taught. . . ?
RD:
He taught oil painting. Dan--I didn't have much to
do with Farmer--Dan Mendelowitz taught watercolor.
And Dan and I became very close friends and [I--Ed.]
continued to see him through the years. He died a
couple a years ago.
SL:
I think a lot of us know him for his book on American
art, which. . . .
RD:
Oh, you know. . . .
SL:
Oh sure. Used the book for years.
RD:
Um hmm.
SL:
I gather a bit from what other people have written
that he was very interested in the workof Dove and
the early American modernists as well as some of the
European work as well.
RD:
Well, I think he was, of any contemporary work, he
was--what's the word I want?--that the American moderns
were acceptable to him. At that time, the European
modernism was really a kind of a thorn in Dan's side.
And he, in his, he did marvelous lectures with his
survey course, of slides and so astute, but then he'd
come to modernism and show Picasso or Matisse--or
both--and--of course both--and he couldn't resist
making comments that would bring down the house in
the little theater there. And he was funny and. .
. .
SL:
So it discouraged further interest.
RD:
. . . and then he'd sincerely, in such a sincere way,
he would defend Matisse and his patterns and what
not. "And you know, there's nothing really, nothing
wrong with this. It's like a nice necktie. (laughter)
A nicely patterned necktie."
SL:
Goodness.
RD:
I would never have repeated this story while he was
alive, because I think he, he probably. . . .
SL:
Did he change his mind in later years? He must have.
RD:
Well, I don't know when he changed his mind. Either
he repressed all this that he said, or cringed whenever
he thought of it. Where were we?
SL:
You were at Stanford taking from a liberal group of
courses.
RD:
Yeah.
SL:
So then did you find that the kind of work and background
that you brought into this situation, how did that
fare in this climate? And of work that you were doing?
RD:
Well, very well, because they gave me great freedom
at Stanford and I. . . What I haven't said yet, referred
to yet, is Edward Hopper, who. . . . There was the
Cezanne thing, but then I was introduced--or perhaps
I knew Hopper a little bit when I came there--but
there, with Dan's courses, his photographic slides
and. . . . [phone rings] That [isn't supposed to]
ring.
SL:
That's okay. I'll just turn it off.
[Break
in taping]
SL:
So, let's see, we were at Stanford and I was asking
you, the kind of work that you were doing when you
came, or the kind of work that you'd done prior to
entering college, how that transfered itself into
that situation?
RD:
Oh yeah, yeah. Well, so here was Hopper influence,
very strong. I was absolutely, very different response
from the Cezanne black-and-white reproductions. Here,
Mendelowitz thought Hopper was great. Sloan--or not
Sloan, but--Reginald Marsh was his, he had studied
and that was his god. Not mine--Hopper, but he also
loved Hopper and so I was really smitten, love. I
mean it wasn't this puzzling thing as with Cezanne.
So I embraced Hopper completely, and as you can tell
by the reproduction here in the book. . . .
SL:
This.
RD:
I of course had to go outside and paint; everyone
else painted in the studio, but I was allowed to get
in my car and find subjects to work with, and then
I would just bring in the pictures for criticism.
So I was free to combine some of the influences that
are being. . . . There wasn't this kind of thing at
Stanford that there had been at high school, the Mexican
muralists or the social. . . . Actually it was a bit
more modern at high school. (chuckles)
SL:
Ah. This is Palo Alto Circle, 1943? That's the one
you're talking about?
RD:
Yeah.
SL:
In terms of what you've admired of Hopper, was it
the. . . . Hopper was both a painter of locations
and moods and feelings and a painter of figures.
RD:
Um hmm.
SL:
And was there an aspect of that appealed to you more
than others? You weren't, or were you going out seeking
interesting views?
RD:
I think it was the landscape mainly. The figures seemed
then extremely stiff to me. And of course I realize
now that that stiffness is part of him, part of what
he saying about the people. But that didn't really
get to me then. They were simply a bit too stiff,
so I preferred the pure, I guess, I was going to say
landscape, but cityscape, and. . . .
SL:
This is a very formal painting. This is arranged in
a quite-knowing overlapping way.
RD:
Huh, well, actually. . . . I know that knowing doesn't
have to be right on the surface of things--it wasn't.
I mean, I liked the look of that scene, and I sat
there and put it down on the canvas. There was no
formal, conscious formal attempt.
SL:
And it wasn't the social scene aspect of that era
that interested you at all at that point?
RD:
No, no. And I think with Hopper, the use of light
and shade and the atmosphere, that kind of drenched,
saturated with mood, and its kind of austerity, it
was the kind of work that just seemed made for me.
I mean, it was just, you know, I looked at it and
it was mine, which was very different from most of
the other, all of the other artists I. . . .
SL:
It's marvelous; that's proved out over time, too,
in a way that's quite surprising, you know, the initial
grasp that this is yours. . . .
RD:
Yes.
SL:
. . . and all of the subsequent periods of your. .
. . There's still an essence of that somewhere, [around
it all]. Quite intriguing. Did you. . . . From what
you described previously, it seemed that you were
drawing and doing watercolor painting. Now had you
switched to oil painting at this point? And had to
master that whole medium? Or had you been working
in that way before?
RD:
I was working in both ways. I was signed up with Arnautoff
and Mendelowitz, and one day I'd do watercolors; another
day, as the spirit moved me, and. . . . I never had
great problems with oil paint. The watercolor medium
was transparent watercolor, which, looking back, it
seems--well, Dan was a watercolorist, in that Homer
tradition, but to start people out, that seems a little
bit wrong to me, to start people out with a very difficult,
with a difficult medium like that,and oil paint or
gouache paint is pretty forthright, but watercolor
is, requires so much kind of understanding of the
medium in a way that the others--of course require
their understanding too--but there's so much kind
of skill involved in things that one should know that
one can't talk of watercolor in the sense that one
wants to really follow this painting through, because
if you do, you start to make changes, and then it's
just, it's not as great. And that seems wrong to me
for. . . . I don't know why I'm off on this.
SL:
Oh, that's okay.
RD:
It doesn't seem quite right for a student to. . .
.
SL:
Um hmm, to have to tackle the most difficult thing
right off.
RD:
Yeah, yeah. One should have a medium that lends itself
to digging in, I would think.
SL:
So there you were enjoying all of this wonderful experience
and the war was right over your shoulder, and you
were already enlisted? How was it that you were able
to go to school and. . . .
RD:
Well, they had a program, it was called the V-12 program,
a navy program, and my branch of it was Marines. And
the idea was that, these people came to colleges and
recruited the students, and I was assured by the Marine
Corps that I would stay in Stanford until I graduated,
and then I would go on into active service. And maybe
they did mean that, maybe they weren't lying, but
I, there were some disasters in the Marines, and so
they started calling up their reserves a lot sooner
than they intended. I guess that's giving them the
benefit of the doubt. (laughter) But at any rate,
I only stayed at Stanford one quarter--maybe a quarter
and a half after I actually signed up. But I was not
in uniform at Stanford. And then. . . . Should I go
on to UC?
SL:
Yeah. I was also interested though, this was about
the time that you married Mrs. Diebenkorn, Phyllis?
RD:
Yeah, I, we married when I left. . . . Well, a couple
of weeks before I went to UC Berkeley.
SL:
I remember you told me--it was years ago--about how
you had broken your leg or something, and she had
come to visit you in a hospital. Am I remembering
this correctly, or. . .
RD:
No, you're not.
SL:
No.
RD:
She had appendicitis and I visited her.
SL:
Oh, okay, all right.
RD:
And maybe the accident to me, I had an accident in
my freshman year at Stanford--I fell out of a window--but
I didn't know her then.
SL:
I've got it all turned around I think.
RD:
Yeah, well. (chuckles)
SL:
So you two met each other very young and were. . .
.
RD:
Yeah, my last. . . . I guess I had met her once before
but--earlier, a year earlier--that she had been away
from school for several quarters and then she came
back and during my last quarter I met her then. And
so then we got married when I left Stanford and when,
after I actually, I had, when I was married, I had
my orders to be on active duty at University of California.
SL:
That must have been hard. My goodness. All of these
rapid changes and. . .
RD:
Oh yes, yeah.
SL:
. . . desire to be at home, just when you have to
go and. . . .
RD:
So, at, I saw her on weekends, when I was at Callahan
Hall, which was International House at UC, Berkeley.
SL:
Was she also an art student?
RD:
No, she was American literature, English and American
literature, her major at Stanford, and later on, psychology,
when she went back to school, much, after the war.
SL:
Okay. And while you were going, was she in school
with you?
RD:
At Stanford. But she wasn't in school. She went to
work as a draftsman for the, [I think] at Fort, Fort
something or other in San Francisco?
SL:
As a draftsman?
RD:
Yeah.
SL:
So she could draw as well?
RD:
Yeah. In her last, in that quarter at Stanford when
we met, she was taking drafting, I guess with the
Navy there.
SL:
My!
RD:
It was a Navy-sponsored course at Stanford. So she
was a qualified draftsman at the time we were married.
So then she proceeded to continue that activity while
I was in the service.
SL:
That's an interesting accomplishment for someone in
literature. (chuckles)
RD:
Yeah. Well, but I think her big job was when she went
out to a troop ship that, or a ship that was, had
just come in, I guess, a troop ship, and it was going
to be converted into a hospital ship, or something,
something like that, and she was assigned the whole
latrine system. (laughter) And so she, for about six
months, all she drew was positioned latrines, and
positioning, and. . . . (more laughter)
SL:
Yeah, I guess in time of war you do what you have
to do.
RD:
Yeah.
SL:
So in the summer of '43, then, you were in the Marine
Corps officer training, and then you went to Berkeley,
and you were transfered to Berkeley?
RD:
Um hmm.
SL:
And you, again, though, in, you were being trained
to do, what? Maps or some kind. . . .
RD:
No, that comes later. No, I was in regular OCS, Officer
Training [Officer Candidate School--Ed.]
RD:
And I was in uniform and. . . . You know, shall I
just proceed?
SL:
Please do, yes.
RD:
It was a Marine Corps unit at, along with lots of
Navy. There was a Marine Corps sergeant and there
was a commandant, a captain. And so we took classes,
although we got up very early and did all sorts of
exercises and ran all the. . . . There were about
35 of us that ran all over the campus in the, every
morning. And we got weekends off. And what the majors
were, I mean, what people specialized in, had to do
somewhat with what they had done at Stanford. Although
in some cases, it was kind of terrible, and I do,
I recall this, standing in line at, the first day,
and, with a sergeant and the captain behind a desk
reassigning, reassigning one's major, so that. . .
. And I'm standing in this line and a business major
would become a physics major, and you'd see these
people clap their hands to their foreheads, and say,
"Oh, my god!"
SL:
Oh, my. "I'm not going to do that," huh?
RD:
So just about everybody was being changed, was having
their central activity changed, and then they came
to me. And they were going by lists, so if you were,
if you were a biology major, well, the sergeant would
go down the list, "Duh, duh, duh, biology."
And then there would be a paralleling column. Well,
a biologists becomes a. . . .
SL:
Hospital corpsman, or something?
RD:
Something like that. And so he went down the list
and he didn't find any art. So he said, "Well,
we'll keep you in art." (laughs) Which was. .
. .
SL:
Great!
RD:
So I was the only person in this quite large art department
there, as opposed to the really small one at Stanford.
SL:
And that's where you ran into Erle Loran?
RD:
Yeah.
SL:
And Worth Ryder?
RD:
Yeah, um hmm, yeah. And Eugene Neuhaus. And I was
the only art student in uniform. And I drew and painted.
. . .
SL:
Had. . . . At that point was Erle Loran teaching the
kind of thing he wrote in his book on Cezanne?
RD:
Yeah.
SL:
The composition?
RD:
Yeah, uh huh.
SL:
And he had been, I gather, a Hans Hoffman student?
RD:
Yeah, um hmm. [Exactly].
SL:
And that sounded somewhat like what Hoffman taught
back east as well.
RD:
Exactly.
SL:
And was that something that you had, I mean, you had
contact with?
RD:
I had had no contact with it before. His book wasn't,
he was writing the book. It was well known that Erle
Loran had a book that was going to come out next year.
And when I saw the book--and I still think it's an
impressive book--but there were no surprises for me,
because I'd had it all in the, in his courses. So
the book was, and the teaching were one and the same.
And so then the Cezanne thing picked up again.
SL:
Yes. And it renewed some of those interests. . . .
RD:
Oh, absolutely! And so then I fell really into this.
SL:
Did you embrace it, or were you still wondering about
it, or. . . .
RD:
Oh absolutely! And Cezanne was in a somewhat. . .
.
End
Tape 1
[Tape
2, side A] [Note: Side B not recorded]
SL:
So he was teaching, then painting, and using the Cezanne
structures as an adjunct to the painting course, or.
. . .
RD:
Let's see, did I have a painting course from him?
I'm not sure. I think it was mostly drawing from him.
I think it was with Worth Ryder that I did painting.
But then, then I worked things out so that I could
paint outside, like [I _____, name?]. And Loran was
very resistant at first to that, but then he let me
do it. So I'd bring my work in and talk to him in
his office, and that was fun.
SL:
I would think it would be.
RD:
We argued, and. . . .
SL:
Oh, you did. What did you argue about?
RD:
Well, I had resistance to him. He was a pretty. .
. . Well, he was didactic, he was. . . .
SL:
He was?
RD:
Yeah.
SL:
Did he tell you what to do?
RD:
Well, he was. . . .
SL:
How to do it?
RD:
Well, he would talk about composition exclusively,
and he would, he would make pronouncements that sometimes
I just couldn't accept. [phone rings] Dammit!
[Break
in taping]
RD:
Oh yeah.
SL:
What is. . . . You were out painting and discovering
your own subjects and bringing the paintings back?
RD:
Well, he had. . . . I don't, I'm not putting him down
when I say this, but he had really ironclad theory,
primarily--almost exclusively--based on Cezanne. And
there were things that I just had to challenge--small--when
he'd make his sweeping pronouncements.
SL:
What was it that you wanted in your work that perhaps
didn't fit his formula?
RD:
I just suspected that you were going to ask when I
said that there were things that I took exception
[to--Ed.].
SL:
(chuckles)
RD:
I think that I. . . . I don't. . . . We had several
almost-arguments. But, the, I only remember the subject
of one. . . . There was a Cezanne reproduction that
he brought out for some reason or other which had,
it was back to the apples falling off the table. There
was this tilted top, and there was something that
he wanted me to do in my painting that, he wanted
me to show rooftop or something or other and not have
it move out into depth where it would go off into
a tunnel or something, get lost to the surface. And
he brought out, I guess he brought out this reproduction,
[the, Cezanne's] illustration of this tabletop that
came up and this was kind of distortion, I, that,
not exactly in the picture, but. . . . Theoretically
this was not right somehow that one made this kind
of, this kind of tampering with the logic of gravity,
and this was something that was, that I wasn't going
to accept. So that's the only, that's the only. .
.
SL:
Did you feel that perhaps you had some allegiance
to what things really, what nature did, that you could
observe, rather than a formula that would be followed?
RD:
I think so, yeah.
SL:
Because there's always a great deal of nature in Cezanne,
and Cezanne made his negotiations with what he saw.
RD:
Exactly, sure.
SL:
And he would be. . . .
RD:
And they were a bit in conflict with mine so far,
and. . . .
SL:
Also maybe to do justice to him, and to his way of.
. . . You'd have to find your own way of doing it.
RD:
I think so. Yes.
SL:
One can be inspired but not maybe imitate.
RD:
Exactly.
SL:
Was there any talk of Hoffman and what Hoffman was
doing back in New York, or was this sort of implied?
RD:
A little bit. I wasn't, I heard the name, of course,
there, but nobody was really saying I'm presenting
Hoffman's theories. So it was, Hoffman was just a
name when I, at that time, when I was at UC. I'm trying
to think what else would have happened there in the
art way.
SL:
Because Hoffman did teach there briefly, in what,
'31 was it?
RD:
Yeah, yeah. I think it was '30--'30, '31, somewhere
in there. It had an enormous impact on, I guess, Loran
and John Haley and Worth Ryder, [a, the] sculptor.
I can't remember.
SL:
But already in the world, surrealism was rearing its
presence. . . .
RD:
Yes, it was.
SL:
. . . and things were changing, and yet that wasn't
much in the air yet at that point?
RD:
Well, as I recall, there was--now I'm not certain
of this--but I kind of that surrealism had a kind
of bad name at UC with all that. . . . It was. . .
. I'm not certain what place surrealism did have.
SL:
Yeah, I know. . . . Among, at least in the later thirties,
people who admired the more cubist/constructivist
tradition coming out of Cezanne tended--some of them,
at least in New York that I know of, Gallatin, Morris,
those people--tended to truly disapprove of especially
the more realistic types of surrealism.
RD:
Um hmm, yeah.
SL:
And Miro was perhaps as far as they would go in that
direction.
RD:
That's right, yes. And [Masson].
SL:
They felt it didn't have plasticity.
RD:
[Ernst], they would accept.
SL:
No, these people wouldn't have accepted Ernst.
RD:
Hmm?
SL:
I mean, these people I talked to wouldn't have accepted
Ernst either, but of course the Guggenheim group and
Pollock and those people of course did.
RD:
Um hmm.
SL:
So then you were reassigned to Washington, D.C., area?
RD:
First I went to South Carolina to boot camp. No art
there. (chuckles) Just a lot of splashing around in
swamps and. . . . That was mercifully short, boot
camp tour. Then to North Carolina, Camp Lejune, which
corresponded to Camp Pendleton in the west--big, the
biggest Marine Corps base--and there my unit, well,
we were put through the paces, given further training
and awaiting. . .
SL:
Did you feel that you were. . . .
RD:
Hmm?
SL:
Did you feel you were about to go to the front?
RD:
Well, no, not yet. We were awaiting the official OCS,
the real OCS, which was, is, took place at Quantico,
Virginia. So North Carolina was--well, the word boondocks
originated there. And so I was there for, oh, four
months, something like that. And then, then to Quantico.
And that was, oh well, that was a tough one. That's
when I got kicked out of OCS.
SL:
What did you do or not do?
RD:
Well, I did some kind of dumb things. I had an argument
of. . . . Dumb thing. I. . . . Shall I go into detail
like this, or. . . .
SL:
It's interesting, but it doesn't. . . . If you don't
want to, it's your choice.
RD:
Yeah.
SL:
I think it means Officer Candidate School.
RD:
Yeah, that's right. Well, I guess the worse thing
I did was I was leading my platoon and we came to
this, it was, each person had a turn leading the platoon,
each person in the platoon, so I was platoon leader
for this problem of bringing my platoon through a
swamp and arriving at what I found was a little fortified
situation with a Japanese flag sticking up there.
And, well, I'm making myself the hero here, but this
was one of the reasons why I got kicked out of OCS.
I had my platoon be very careful, lay low, and I'm
very, very cautious about this thing, because I thought
that the thing was probably booby-trapped.
SL:
Sure.
RD:
And I forget how, exactly how it worked out, but somebody
sneaked in and tossed a grenade in and presumably
blew up the thing, but it was taken, the position
was taken very unspectacularly, and the sargeant was
absolutely furious because I didn't show any Marine
Corps spirit.
SL:
Oh. (laughs)
RD:
That I should have moved right in there, and I should
have, I should have smashed the flag, and I just couldn't
behave right at all.
SL:
Oh my.
RD:
And I just blew up, because I was sure, and I. . .
.
SL:
Oh. You told him off?
RD:
I told him off! And maybe this was another test. Maybe
it's subtler than I think. Maybe they were testing
my, could I, could I stand there and take what the
sergeant told me.
SL:
That's when you showed the Marine Corps spirit, right?
RD:
Uh, yeah. I should have just stood at attention and
said, "Yes, sir." Maybe it was all a rather
complex test, but I fell the other way, and so! That
had repercussions, and then a week later I dropped
my rifle at a parade in a ceremony where the commandant
of the Marine Corp was present. And so I found myself
kicked out.
SL:
Did you have great aspirations that you were going
to succeed? Did it bother you at all?
RD:
It didn't, somehow it didn't bother me very much.
And in my recollection (chuckles), the thing that
bothered me the most was that I had been fitted for
my uniform, my officer's uniform. We all had gone
to this tailor one day. And there were these marvelous
short coats that the Marine Corps officers, a lot
of them, wore. They were camel's hair and they are
absolutely beautiful. They were a little short of
the knee and really, really something. No enlisted
man got close to one of those. And I had, was fitted
for that. And I recall that this was my big sadness,
that I wasn't. . . .
SL:
That you weren't going to get your coat?
RD:
. . . going to get my coat. (laughter)
SL:
Maybe it saved your life too, not to get the coat.
RD:
Yeah. Well, I'll try and be a little faster.
SL:
Oh, that's okay. So you apparently though were able
to go to Washington, in and out of Washington at some
point in this time?
RD:
Yeah, well, this was a very different thing that I
went into at this point, because everything had been
programmed for me previously--I mean, I was in OCS--and
suddenly I was to be an enlisted man, and plenty of
those there, different barracks and. . . Well, I was
still in my barracks--I hadn't moved out yet, in OCS--and.
. . . Some of this I've told, and maybe it's in that
book, I don't know, but at any rate, around Christmas
I did a lot of drawings of a couple of officers and
the sargeants. I did one drawing and so then they
all wanted these drawings to send home for Christmas.
SL:
Sure.
RD:
And so I did these very controlled, and I think pretty
good portraits. I guess they stylistically are. .
. . I think they were kind of Holbein-derived.
SL:
Oh, they're nice. I'll bet they were beautiful.
RD:
I think some of them were pretty good. But at any
rate, one sargeant was especially interested in what
was going to happen to me, because he felt gratitude
that I'd just given him this drawing to send to his
mother, and he talked to the commanding officer, and
so I had an interview with the commanding officer,
and he said, "Well, I'm sending you to the photographic
section here, because I think that with your drawing
abilities they can use you over there. So I was transferred
to the photographic section which was primarily Disney,
Walt, the Disney people.
SL:
Really! Oh!
RD:
Yeah. Because the photographers were off in the Pacific,
the Disney people were doing maps, animated maps,
to. . . .
SL:
Oh, I see. They had special skills that suited that
kind of map-making.
RD:
Um hmm. So these were training films, and [I] played
with an animated map to show how positions were taken.
SL:
Yeah, um hmm.
RD:
So that's what I was assigned to do. And so I made
some friends there, right away. It was a jolly group.
And I didn't have their kind of skills at all, but.
. . . So I got less and less to do. Each big map wash
that I tried to make and then there'd be a big bubble
or blob in it every time, and I just couldn't do that
kind of thing. Well, I would get left fewer and fewer
assignments, and finally I found myself with art materials
and. . . .
SL:
Free time, huh?
RD:
. . . free time. (laughs) So that went on for quite
a while. But in the meantime, on weekends I was able
to, Quantico was something like 30 miles from Washington,
D.C. and Phyllis was living in, across the river from
Washington. I can't. . . .
SL:
So she sort of traveled around the country?
RD:
Yeah, um hmm.
SL:
[Typical] story then, moving [one, then], my goodness.
RD:
She stayed with friends in Williamsburg, I think,
while I was in North Carolina, and then she moved
to. . . . I can't think of the old city across the
river from the. . . . It's in Virginia. Well, at any
rate, we had a house and I was there on the weekends.
But then we went to the museums, all the time. Just
feasted--on the National Gallery and Phillips Memorial
Gallery and Corcoran and. . . .
SL:
I gather the Phillips was a special favorite, from
things I've read?
RD:
Yeah. It was, then it had. . . . It's continually
expanding. I think they expanded again for the second
time just recently. But then it was simply a big--I
guess one would call it a mansion--big old house,
furnished, and somehow survived the public trooping
through all the time. But there were the original
rugs on the floor, the original furniture, and one
was made to, the hospitality was extended, especially
to servicemen, and. . . .
SL:
At that point they had the. . . .
RD:
. . . one could smoke and sit in the rooms and talk
and look, and. . . .
SL:
A very different museum style than today?
RD:
Very different, yes.
SL:
They were rich then in the Impressionist, post-Impressionist,
and American paintings?
RD:
Um hmm, yeah. Yeah, post-Impressionist, their strongest
suit. Well, Bonna | 
