Famous Figures

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.