Art by Yue Minjun

Yue is known almost entirely for one recurring image: himself, repeated across canvases, sculptures, and prints, frozen in a wide, toothy, slightly unsettling laugh. He's said he was directly inspired by seeing fellow artist Geng Jianyi's own laughing self-portrait at a 1989 Beijing exhibition. His painting "Execution," which reworks imagery associated with the Tiananmen Square crackdown into a red-walled firing-squad scene, sold for £2.9 million at Sotheby's London in 2007, at the time a record for Chinese contemporary art. He still lives and works in Songzhuang, an artists' village outside Beijing that's home to dozens of other Chinese contemporary artists.