Dana Schutz on The Mountain, by Balthus

Dana Schutz: Sometimes you can actually get more from the paintings that bother you.

Dawoud Bey on Roy DeCarava

Dawoud Bey: His deeper contribution was as an African American artist who took that piece of himself out into the world and brought that into his work.

Dia Batal on a Syrian tile panel

Dia Batal: When you really zoom in, there is this human connection.

Dorothea Rockburne on an ancient head of a ruler

Dorothea Rockburne: Art does not exist in singular units. It is a part of its culture.

Jacques Villeglé on Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso

Jacques Villeglé: These paintings were fresh and new and shocking... and they still are alive and interesting to me today.

Jane Hammond on snapshots and vernacular photography

Jane Hammond: The people that made these photographs aren't artists, and nobody inside the pictures... thought that they were part of a work of art, either.

Liliana Porter on Portrait of a Young Man, by Jacometto

Liliana Porter: I like the idea of how it's possible to have something so close and yet so far, so familiar and unknown.