Top Artists Share Their Favorite Artworks at the Met Museum 

Wouldn’t it be fun to trail artists around a museum to learn what most inspires them? For The Artist Project: What Artists See When They Look at Art (Phaidon, $70), the Metropolitan Museum of Art invited 120 top talents to choose the works that spark their imagination. Here’s a sampling:

The Green Interior (Figure Seated by a Curtained Window), by Édouard Vuillard. Photo: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Green Interior (Figure Seated by a Curtain Window), by Édouard Vuillard

“The painting is screaming, that color is screaming. I think you actually turn green, you’re illuminated before it.” —Lisa Yuskavage

The Wyndham Sisters: Lady Elcho, Mrs. Adeane, and Mrs. Tennant, by John Singer Sargent. Photo: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Wyndham Sisters: Lady Elcho, Mrs. Adeane, and Mrs. Tennant, by John Singer Sargent

“You’re standing in front of these gorgeous women at this insanely large scale. Where would you be if you were in that room? You’d be on your knees.” —Kehinde Wiley

The Path Through the Irises, by Claude Monet. Photo: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Path Through the Irises, by Claude Monet

“It has some of the ugliest combinations of colors I’ve ever seen in my life…. It’s an absolute masterpiece.” —George Condo