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.

Mark Bradford on Clyfford Still

Mark Bradford: To use the whole social fabric of our society as a point of departure for abstraction reanimates it, dusts it off.

Moyra Davey on a rosary terminal bead with lovers | Death

Moyra Davey: It's a reminder of death, but at the same time you can be in denial because the exquisite nature of this takes over.

Paul Tazewell on portraits by Anthony van Dyck

Paul Tazewell: For this time in history [17th century England], clothing was significantly more feminized than we're used to today.

Sheila Hicks on The Harp of Praise, by Baselyos

Sheila Hicks: You can't walk past this little book, and not stop. It has powerful staying power.

Swoon on The Third-Class Carriage, by Honoré Daumier

Swoon: One of the highest functions of art I have identified, within my own work, is to be a vessel for empathy.

Thomas Demand on the Gubbio studiolo

Thomas Demand: "It's the promise that with the genius of the human brain one can somehow cage the horrors of the daily life."

Wayne Thiebaud on The Horse Fair, by Rosa Bonheur

Wayne Thiebaud: "That's not a photograph; it's a painting."

Wilfredo Prieto on sculptures by Auguste Rodin

Wilfredo Prieto: "I'm more interested... [in] all the different sketches and the experimental pieces leading to the final [sculpture]."

Zoe Beloff on Guerre Civile, by Édouard Manet

Zoe Beloff: "The people on the street: These are people that we have to memorialize!"

Sheila Pepe on European armor

Sheila Pepe: "It is a kind of fashion, as well as a protective device."

Wenda Gu on Lyric Suite, by Robert Motherwell

Wenda Gu: "It's all about control, otherwise it would totally be a mess."

Diana Al-Hadid on the villa cubiculum of P Fannius Synistor

Diana Al-Hadid: "You can sink deep into the space, and go infinitely past these impressive, proud buildings into gardens. It's got narrative muscle."

An-My Lê on Cuisine, by Eugène Atget

An-My Lê: "It infuses the picture with a certain poetry, with a certain intimacy."