Richard Tuttle’s world is comprised of cardboard, bubble wrap, waferboard and wire. When he became an artist in the 60’s, he looked around and saw only massive, billboard-sized art. He decided there must be an equal and opposite energy, and that’s what he would explore. Using vulnerable elements that crinkle, wrinkle and tear, he says: “If I can free a humble material from itself, perhaps I can free myself from myself.”

In Taos, New Mexico, the minimalist painter Agnes Martin repeats rhythmic, extremely simplified forms, purging any sentimental content from the art. “For 20 years I knew that I had not hit upon my vision” she says, admitting that she burned decades worth of her paintings. “It took me 20 years to get free.”

John Baldessari, a founding father of Conceptualism, aims for successful juxtapositions combining photographs with text. His idea of a success is an impersonal ensemble, yet one that imposes a constant logic and identity. Years ago at CalArts, he taught life drawing classes with a drape over the model’s head, inspiring students to look at the body totally, not just the face. Still today, a subversive sense of irony shines through in his signature colored “dots” over the faces of his subjects.

At a cabin in Woodstock, Joan Snyder refines her sensuous art amid a lush forest of birch and white pine. First lauded in Time Magazine by Robert Hughes in the 70’s -- for her feminist art which merged body parts and abstract imagery -- her visual dynamic has now moved toward the lyrical. For Snyder, the artistic struggle is a search for the simplest gestural mark, for the most direct communication.

Amy Adler reclaims personal history through self-portraits. A rising star, with a show last year at Los Angeles MoCA, her frank, sometimes graphic images of self-exposure disarm the audience with her personal fantasies. Once her emotional pastel and charcoal drawings are photographed for final exhibition, the drawings are destroyed for ever, “so I know the originals have ceased to exist”, she says. Her technique is a purging process, removing any traces of guilt, shame, sin.

The imaginative tableaux of Robert Williams revel in surreal cartoon imagery, emanations from his living room in the San Fernando Valley. An “outsider artist” and co-founder of Zap Comics in the 60’s with Robert Crumb, Robert found himself on the inside of cult status, managing to cross-over from cartoons to sought-after paintings.

The art world has its Brando and his name is Brice Marden, and he carries his own mystique. He paints using 2 foot-long brushes, and for his ink drawings he manipulates 4-foot long twigs, which are more difficult to control than any pencil. For the first time in an American art documentary, Marden shows how his ink drawings are done. It’s hard, physical work: he sweats profusely. “I don’t plan what I’m doing in advance- no, that wouldn’t be interesting to me at all.”

Preparing for a solo show, the revered Elizabeth Murray stands on a ladder scraping excess paint from one of her shaped canvases. “I’ve never heard of an artist getting a good idea at a cocktail party,” she says. Murray, has managed to capture the critics without spending hours “making the scene.” She now shows us current designs for a makeover of a subway station, an assignment for the Transit Authority. The stop: Bloomingdale’s.

Everything that Louise Bourgeois creates, whether in wood, marble, fabric, or bronze, comes from her memory of some past emotional or erotic experience. Born in Paris, she moved to the USA in 1939, and is now considered America’s most important living woman artist. Louise’s work defies categorization; her most powerful tool are instict and stream of consciousness. Now age 90, her ouevre influences a generation of emerging artsts.

One of the early stars of the Pop-Art Movement, Ed Ruscha uses gas stations, empty parking lots, street signs and maps of Los Angeles as sources of inspiration. Frequently using words in his paintings, his literary landscapes burst from the physical world around him - the world “right outside the window.”

New Yorker David Deutsch’s surveillance landscapes, painted from a telescopic distance, hint darkly at mysteries rather than revel in picturesque nature. Unnatural and eerie, his faceless neighborhoods put a unique spin on the concept of panorama. A series of now famous domed, pantheon-style face paintings, combine the minutiae of existence with the resonance of memory.

Born in Louisiana, Michael Ray Charles believes that “negative images of African-Americans are hiding throughout American culture, just below the surface, on TV sitcoms, in advertising and in sports.” An admirer of artist Norman Rockwell, and known for painting Black Elvis, Charles’ revised depictions of characters such as Aunt Jemima, Mack Daddy and Sambo inspire reflection on the racial stereotyping in American pop culture.

For Lari Pittman, lush, flamboyant visuals and hyper-decoration serve as a complement, rather than an adversary, to content. As an openly gay painter, he has no interest in occupying one of the safe, marginal positions Museums currently provide for art about race, gender, class, or sexuality -- as if these topics were endangered and in need of special treatment. His shameless pictures demonstrate that there is no such thing as gay art, only gay artists.

Elizabeth Peyton is known for her portraits of Pop icons Kurt Cobain, David Hockney, Sid Vicious and Oasis. But actually her subjects cover a wide range of historical figures, from Oscar Wilde and Prince Harry, to Queen Elizabeth and Disraeli. Peyton’s artworks are infused with respect, cherishment and sweetness towards these figures. She praises their ways of living, and says that “portraying them brings true joy.” Unlike some artists, she does not criticize the world which surrounds us, but creates from experiences.

Neil Jenney is an old-time American iconoclast, a vanishing breed. He once sold blood to stay alive. Hailed by critics and curators, he no longer will have anything to do with dealers. Making his film debut, Jenney explains his attitude towards dealers, his disregard for arrogant tycoon collectors, and the evolution of his art. His intense “abstract” landscapes turned art back to subject matter, and have influenced a generation of young artists. Neil Jenney recently had a show at the Whitney Museum.

Chuck Close had a solid reputation when he was crippled by the collapse of a spinal artery in 1988. After months of rehab, he returned to work in a motorized wheelchair. He paints today with a special “hand brace” and finds his paint bottles on a maneuverable easel. He once used a forklift that went up and down his mammoth portraits; now, he remains stationary and the painting itself moves up and down. Chuck Close invites you to see how everything works. He had a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1995.

Richmond Burton’s abstract compositions, though often based on an architectonic grid are dominated by colors and gestures that seem capable of swirling off the canvas. “You can exist in our world and never come across anything beautiful” says Burton, “I see painting as an antidote: putting something in our life that gives it some space.” Burton, who lives in the Elaine de Kooning house in East Hampton, finds the historical surroundings a source of inspiration.

Ursula von Rydingsvard, a sculptor of massive wood pieces roams her Brooklyn studio with an electric drill. Ursula discusses the problems artists have maintaining personal relationships; and how her powerful wood sculpture draws on memories... of the forests in the Germany and Poland of her youth.

Gary Simmons here makes chalk drawings of racial stereotypes, then erases and smudges the images.

Dave Hickey is a free-lance writer and cultural critic. Former Executive Editor of Art in America Magazine and Contributing Editor to The Village Voice, he has written for The Rolling Stone, Art News, Art in America, Artforum, Interview, Harper's Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. His critical essays on art have been collected in two volumes The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty (1993), and Air Guitar, Essays on Art and Democracy (1998). His most recent book, Stardumb, is a collection of stories.