Lucian Freud's 'Benefits Worker Sleeping' (1995)

Paint made flesh

Max Beckmann's 'Self-Portrait' (1914)

MoMA's first acquisition

Lawrence Weiner's 'As Far as the Eye Can See' (2007)

Language as sculpture

Rembrandt's 'Self-Portrait with Cap, Openmouthed' (1630)

What an expression!

Fred Sandback's 'Untitled (Sculptural Study, Six-Part Construction)' (1977)

Virtual, sculptural shapes

François Boucher's 'Portrait of Madame de Pompadour' (1756)

Une femme savante

Maurizio Cattlena's 'Ave Maria' (2007)

This signifies what?

Franz Marc's 'Fate of the Animals' (1913)

Indicative of destruction

André Kertész's 'Under the Eiffel Tower' (1929)

Better look twice

Dan Flavin's 'Untitled (To Jan and Ron Greenberg)' (1972-73)

Mundane or majestic?

Eugène Delacroix's 'Death of Sardanapalus' (1827)

Pride's pleasure pyre

Marina Abramovic's 'The Artist is Present' (2010)

Silent yet communicative

Kehinde Wiley's 'Portrait of Andries Stilte II' (2006)

Baroque meets bling

Meret Oppenheim's 'Object' (1936)

Adoration of nonsense

J.A.D Ingres' 'La Grande Odalisque' (1814)

Neoclassical expressive distortion

Henri Matisse's 'Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra)' (1907)

Modern expressive distortion

Guerrilla Girls' 'Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum?' (1989)

Postmodern expressive distortion

Adriaen van der Spelt's 'Still Life with Flowers' (1658)

Fabric or paint?

Robert Rauschenberg's 'Erased de Kooning' (1953)

Absence of presence

Bernd and Hilla Becher's 'Cooling Towers' (1980)

Effects of industrialization

Daniel Buren's 'Les Deux Plateaux' (1986)

Infinite contextual variablity

Caspar Friedrich's 'The Abbey in the Oakwood' (1810)

Nature's sublime potential

Marcel Duchamp's 'Bottle Rack or Hedgehog' (1914)

Let Conceptualism begin!

Lorraine O'Grady's 'The First and the Last of the Modernists, Diptych 1 Red (Charles and Michael)' (2010)

Juxtaposition of geniuses

Carlos Cruz-Diez's 'Cromosaturación Americas Society' (1965-2008)

Direct chromatic engagement

Barkley Hendricks' 'Icon for My Man Superman' (1969)

Abstraction meets figuration

Donald Judd's 'Untitled' (1965)

Total sculptural environment

Mark Rothko's 'Untitled (Black on Gray)' (1969-70)

Infinity made palpable

Deb Sokolow's 'The trouble with people you don't know' (2008)

Paranoid subconscious delineated

Detail from Gianlorenzo Bernini's 'Pluto and Persephone' (1622)

Animating the inanimate