1- Gerhard Richter’s candle series. So real that you can hardly believe its a painting. So cool that Sonic Youth made a cover out of one.
2- Caravaggio’s St. Matthew works in San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. The Martyrdom is particularly wicked, but the image of his calling is more subtle and more highly regarded.
3- Manet’s Olympia at the Orsay. She’s nude, she’s proud, she know what she wants, and she’s for sale. Scandalous in the 19th century, but now she’s just a proud, self-actualized young woman.
4- Miro’s Blue series at the Pompidou. These pretty much blow the doors off of any American AbEx. Miro is better known for his smaller scale monsters and surrealism, but these giants push in a way that even Clyfford Still can’t touch.
5- Vermeer’s Little Street at the Rijksmuseum. This painting has darn near perfect symmetry (windows of diminishing size, edge of house in the middle of the canvas, whites of clouds paired with whites on building, push and pull of foregrounded brick building and backgrounded distant sky) but there’s still a dynamism in it. It’s got a strong diagonal running from low left to high right with roof silhouettes to reinforce it. The content of an otherwise banal street scene invites you to peer into the lives of the inhabitants. Its one of those works that demonstrates why all art, even bad art, always deserves many viewings.

1. The Last Supper – isn’t that Mary to Jesus’ right?
2. Mona Lisa – we will never know for sure.
3. Thomas Kincaid collection because I like cottages. All of his art feels comfortable to me and I imagine myself being there strolling through the grass and dipping my toes into the brook.
4. Picasso – his abstracts looks psychedelic. Yes, I’m a child of the 60s and 70s.
5. Rubens – he painted "real" women.