Profession: artist

Boucher’s saccharine, sometimes titillating representations of a nonchalant world belie his virtuoso representational skills. Piron was friend and advocate – they were fellow-members of a singing club with Rameau and Crébillon. David (a distant cousin) was sent to study with him, but was despatched to another artist for tuition. Fragonard likewise was redirected, to Chardin, Boucher’s neighbour in palace apartments, though later returned as apprentice/assistant. Boucher’s travels in Italy are largely undocumented – it is not known whether he met Tiepolo in Venice. Though he made engravings from Watteau’s drawings, they never met. He told Reynolds he no longer used models.

Ruscha’s paintings, books and other works are often said to mark him out as having a distinctively west-coast sensibility, though his influence spread much further. Irwin was strongly influential as a teacher, and later a stable-mate (along with Berman, and Ruscha’s fellow-student Bell) at the Ferus Gallery, co-founded by Kienholz. Hockney was a friend, and similarly playful observer of west coast ways; Wiener, a colleague and good acquaintance, collaborated on a bookwork; Baldessari also collaborated. Ruscha’s admirer J. G. Ballard (the respect was mutual) wrote that he had ‘the coolest gaze in American art.’

Kienholz is easily underestimated – online sources, and pictures in general, don’t readily do justice to the way that his most notable tableaux and installations (e.g. Five Car Stud, Roxy’s, the Beanery, the State Hospital, Portable War Memorial, The Illegal Operation, Back Seat Dodge) represent unusually powerful images of the seamy underside and questionable mores of his time. Irwin, Bell, Berman and Ruscha were among the close-knit group associated with the important L.A. gallery Kienholz co-founded. Tinguely collaborated with him, while Klein honoured him (alone among his American artist friends) with a piece of his Void.

The uncategorisable Roth is best seen as an enthusiastic one-man-band (with an irreverent mixed-media practice and much collaboration). He met Gomringer in the early 1950’s — they co-founded a magazine. Spoerri was a close friend for life — Roth met Broodthaers through him. Tinguely was another significant friend; his attitude to form led Roth to his own idiosyncratic methods. Beuys got Roth a teaching post, Kagel enlisted him in celebrating Beethoven’s bicentenary, Paik was the only buyer at his first show. He disliked Maciunas, and collaborated with Hamilton (till death), Brecht, Export and Higgins.

Soutine’s painting – expressionistic in a place and time dominated by cubistic influences – has left him overshadowed in many histories. Three of Soutine’s closest friends, Zadkine, Lipchitz and Chagall, met in the studio building la Ruche, were also from Belarus and of Jewish stock. Lipchitz had been introduced by Modigliani, who also introduced him to his first patron and dealer. Cendrars (Russian-speaking and friendly with exiles in Paris) was another neighbour and friend. Miller briefly lived above him. While Picasso, Laurens, Jacob, Satie, Laurencin and Delaunay were all associates, Soutine’s awkward timidity and poor French left him a perpetual outsider.

The gadabout Vautier remains one of the busiest artists associated with Fluxus; he emerged from the art scene in Nice, through which he met Klein and Manzoni, and where his friends Arman and César were often to be found in his idiosyncratic shop. Maciunas kept up a regular correspondence (often to alert him to material in the post). He collaborated with Tinguely and his very good friend Spoerri, gave Orlan an exhibition, was invited to Prague by Knížák, was visited by Buren and Young, and ran a gallery with Brecht (a sign often redirecting visitors to the nearby café they frequented).

Her adult life reads Italy, London, Italy, her father in attendance until she was over 40. She painted Garrick, Winckelmann (who taught her about ancient art, and was introduced by Mengs) and West (future founding member of London’s Royal Academy) during her first Italian stay. In London, Fuseli purportedly proposed to her, and Reynolds helped her out of a dodgy marriage. In Rome, Herder became infatuated, and Goethe rejected her portrait of him as effeminate. Her old friend Canova directed her funeral. Vigée-Le Brun was not electrified by her, but they went to the opera in Rome, and burst out laughing.

Rivera was a studio-neighbour and friend when Mondrian first moved to Paris, soon also meeting Braque and Léger (a lasting friend.) He met van Doesburg and van der Leck at an artists’ colony during WWI. The three, with Vantongerloo, became allies in the movement de Stijl. Van Doesburg became a close friend, the two eating together regularly, visiting the circus and going out dancing. Gabo, a neighbour in London, often fed him, teasing him about his ascetic diet. Archipenko, Calder, Léger, Duchamp, Richter, Moholy-Nagy and Giedion — all old friends — were among those at the memorial service for him.