Richard Diebenkorn holds a special place in my mind. He was an expressionist painter that moved to figures and landscapes and finally to the abstracts like the Ocean Park #79, 1975 show below.

The CBS Morning broadcast mentioned below is illuminating and revealing. Diebenkorn was not only a great artist, but a genuinely good man.
Ken

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #79, 1975 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, purchased with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and with funds contributed by private donors, 1977, 1977-28-1. © 2016 The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation)

View the broadcast:
CBS Sunday Morning broadcast, 1988

"A master of contemporary American art, Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) was noted for landscape paintings, thoughtful figure studies, and geometric abstracts.

In this report for "Sunday Morning," which originally aired on December 27, 1988, correspondent David Browning visited Diebenkorn's studio in California's Sonoma County, to discuss the artist's "trial and error" approach; and New York's Museum of Modern Art, where Diebenkorn was being celebrated by a one-man show of his drawings."

Here is another good resource for all things Diebenkorn: Richard Diebenkorn, Painter's Table

Video: Matisse Documentary by Alastair Sooke

click to view Matisse Documentary by Alastair Sooke   Part 1
This 60 minute video is quite good, very informative with a lot of new material and well worth your time.  I'm archiving it for future inspiration.

Here is Part 2 the Matisse video documentary, A Visit to Chapelle du Rosaire, Vence (near Nice), France.  When I saw photos of the Chapelle in books, I was a bit underwhelmed.  Seeing his stained glass backlit by the sun in this simple church quickly changed my mind. Enjoy these six pleasurable minutes of video.

Workshop: Matisse makes a Big Move

Henri Matisse  "The Red Studio" 1911   Museum of Modern Art, NY

I've always wondered about this oil.  Did Matisse begin a painting with all of these objects painted normally in the room in only to find that he didn't like where the oil was going?  I recall an oil by Wolf Kahn of his barn in Vermont.  It wasn't working out to his liking, so he add a white variant over the entire painting.  It was a remarkable effect, rendering the entire painting in luminous shades of white - leaving the edges of the objects in relief.  Wolf made a bold move in order to 'save' or bring more life into a troubled painting.  The result was over the top.

So when I went to NY last month, I was glad to see this painting again in person.  It is possible that Matisse sketched this in (tables, chairs) and began to fully paint in a few of the objects (vase, plate, some framed works) before reversing ground and insisting on the overall red effect?  Did he plan the red oil the way we see it all along?  It is possible that Matisse got into a fix and scrambled for a better solution?

For this chest, Matisse outlined the object with yellow and green, with some pencil lines or grey paint.  In other places, there is pink oil and white canvas.  Did he begin to fully paint the chest or just outline it?  Was he blocking in the objects normally or is this evidence that he was planning to cover it in red from the start?

Interesting that you can see sketch lines but there is also work using the yellow again and traces of blue and purple. The yellow appears to be more that just an outline since it's visible under the red.  This yellow intrigues me.  Was he blocking in some of the objects in yellow and starting to add the blues and purples as well?  Was he beginning to fill in the furniture in a normal way using a few colors?

 
Who knows for sure what he was thinking and where the red comes in, but Matisse got to a point early in this work using a few spare colors and lines to get the painting blocked in without the red.

In this last close up, paint is added in places after the application of the red.  Matisse is now working on top of the red, bringing the oil to completion.


Looking at these close ups, I'd offer that once he got a fresh look at this large oil in the early stages (due to an interruption by an incoming email, no doubt) he began to analyse his options and decided for something more powerful than another interior scene.

Perhaps this composition was weak - lacking and needed more. Or it may be that the painting in progress was just fine, but once he got the idea of the red as an overall concept, the power of it would be too compelling to resist.

Matisse doesn't give any clues.  He said, "Where I got the color red - to be sure, I just don't know."

Nor do we.  At any rate, here is a powerful tool and strategy for making more engaging works. You can make bold moves to the point of possibly ruining your work, but the rewards are great if you handle the power of your Big Move.

Workshop: Matisse and a technique problem

 Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954) The Piano Lesson. 1916 Oil on canvas. 96 ½ x 83 ¾.  Collection MOMA, NYC

Here's more from my recent visit to NY.  

Matisse had been under some pretty intense criticism with the critics of the day and it had been going on for years. This oil was done after his trip to Morocco and it continues Matisse's exploration into more geometrical shapes and a very new visual presentation. The palette is more reserved for Matisse but the large amounts of grey heighten all the colors, even the off-white tones at the upper right. Black is a color too and it is used for outlines, shadows and dark areas.  This is a large work done in the studio and Matisse has made a number of painterly and intellectual decisions to produce a challenging and thoughtful work of art.

Here is a detail of the green vertical panel, left side. It appears that Matisse overpainted this area preferring the green shown here. This is a great color selection and it is one of the many components that make this work sing. Note that Matisse didn't get the black scroll work right on the first try, nor  was he concerned about how evenly the black lines were put down. You can see where he corrected some of the line work but he allowed the earlier marks to show through. This approach, coupled with the irregular line work, made for a more complex visual effect. It's one of the subtle hallmarks of Matisse's work and it creates more visual sophistication and appeal.  The rule is fat over lean: thinned paint under paint out of the tube or with medium added.

Also... don't paint thinned-out oil paint on top of thicker (fatter) paint. Even the master got a little too thin with the green overpainting and it cracked. Well, it does make another interesting surface effect but I'll bet it gave the museum restorers extra work.

I'll be teaching my oil and pastel workshop on the Strategies for Making Fine Art in Denver, Sat-Sun, July 21-22  Complete info