Famous Figures

Rodin's documented decades of study before producing his major work, his insistence on the model being present continuously to capture the living quality of the pose, and his refusal to accept commissions that would require him to falsify his technical convictions, reflect a Mastery orientation.

Kollwitz spent her career documenting working-class suffering - the Weavers' Revolt, the widows of World War I, the grief of mothers - in prints and sculpture that she described as her obligation. The death of her son in the war did not change her commitment; it deepened it.

Basquiat's documented insistence that his work was both formally sophisticated and politically specific - his simultaneous engagement with art historical traditions and his explicit representation of Black experience in those terms - and his refusal to allow his market success to neutralise his anger, reflect an Identity orientation in which the work's meaning is the self's meaning.

Warhol's construction of a public persona as deliberately blank - the wig, the sunglasses, the monosyllabic interviews - and his documented investigation of what remains when surface is the whole content, reflect an Identity orientation that treated identity itself as the subject of the work.

Haring's documented decision to make his art in public spaces - subways, streets, fences - so that it was available to communities that couldn't enter galleries, and his sustained investment in AIDS activism and HIV awareness at a time when public discussion of AIDS was considered shameful, reflect a Liberation orientation.

Rivera's documented commitment to making public art - murals in government buildings, factories, hospitals - rather than gallery work, and his explicit belief that art belongs to the communities that produced the labour depicted in it, reflect a Community orientation that made public access an aesthetic principle.

Dalí's documented cultivation of public excess - the ocelot on a leash, the lobster telephone, the media performances - and his explicit statement that he did not use drugs because he was already more interesting than anything drugs could produce, reflect a Vitality orientation in which the artist's life is itself the primary work of art.

Matisse's documented pursuit of pleasure as a formal principle - his stated goal of making painting that functioned like a comfortable armchair - and his late-period cut-outs made from a wheelchair when he could no longer stand, reflect a Vitality orientation that persisted even as his body failed.