Vincent van Gogh's 'Potato Eaters' (1885)

Gravity and gloom

Georges Braque's 'Houses at Estaque' (1908)

Cubism's other half

Yves Klein's 'Leap into the Void' (1960)

Leap! (into void)

J.A.D. Ingres' 'Princesse Albert de Broglie' (1853)

My ideal portraitist

Jean-Michel Basquiat in his studio (1985)

Postmodernism's rock star

Alice Neel's 'The Family (John Gruen, Jane Wilson and Julia)' (1970)

Acute psychological portrait

Frans Hals' 'Laughing Cavalier' (1624)

Such salient swagger!

Philip Johnson's 'Glass House' (1949)

Don't throw stones

Joan Miró's 'The Birth of the World' (1925)

Boundless biomorphic abstraction

Alexander Calder's 'Untitled' (1942)

Balance of form

Giuseppe Arcimboldo's 'Summer' (1563)

Just for Kevin

Jon Widman's 'Untitled' (2000)

Just for Lena

Giacomo Balla's 'Street Light' (1910-11)

Futurist force lines

Jana Sterbak's 'Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorexic' (1982)

Avantgarde, avant Gaga

Georges de la Tour's 'St. Joseph the Carpenter' (1642)

1000-watt candle

Katie Holten's 'Excavated Tree (Flowering Dogwood)' (2007)

Consider both sides

Elgin Marbles (447-438 BC)

Heritage vs. hegemony

Barnett Newman's 'Broken Obelisk' (1963-69)

Balance of tension

HC Westermann's 'Letter Drawing (Untitled, Dear Alan: HELP!)' (1963)

Mail art's master

Ed Paschke's 'Bellisima' (1985)

Neon made velvet

Ansel Adam's 'Monolith' (1927)

Pioneer of photography

Corneille (1922-2010)

Rest in peace

Erwin Redl's 'MATRIX II' (2000-05)

Challenging spatial limitations

Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' (1927)

Expressionism meets sci-fi

Lee Krasner's 'Flowering Limb' (1963)

Pollock's pundit/publicist

Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Robie House' (1908-10)

Emphasis on horizontality

Jason Salavon's 'Every Playboy Centerfold, the 1960s' (2002)

Art meets averaging

John and Dominique de Menil

Houston's greatest patrons