The 100 best paintings in New York: 90-81

Where can I see it?: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This painting celebrates the New York World’s Fair and the 150th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration. At the start of World War II, the U.S. economy experienced a bump, a reason behind Stettheimer’s over-the-top patriotism. Inserting herself into the party, politicians and financiers, text and image, artist and subject cavort in a fantastical arrangement.—Jennifer Coates

Photograph: Courtesy © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Where can I see it?: Whitney Museum of American Art

In her abstract works, Murray explored the evocative power of pure color and form unencumbered by concerns about representation. And in this piece, energetic shapes and hues straight out of the visual vocabulary of comic books suggest the playful exuberance of childhood.—Heather Corcoran 

Photograph: Courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art; New York/The Murray-Holman Family Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS); New York

Where can I see it?: Whitney Museum of American Art

French was a practitioner of Magical Realism, a midcentury offshoot of Surrealism that eschewed discordant motifs for plausible depictions of reality that were nonetheless pervaded by a sense of the uncanny or of something not quite right. Rendered in egg tempera, State Park is exemplary in this regard, with its mannequinlike figures frozen in profile on a seaside boardwalk. The overtanned lifeguard on the far right—with his upraised phallic baton—and the paler older gent on his left—who, depicted at a much smaller scale, seems to be boxing the former’s genitals—are particularly noteworthy for their throbbing if conflicted homoeroticism. (French, an upstate native, was gay, and his work stands in sharp contrast to the exuberant if jaded paintings of Paul Cadmus, a former lover and lifelong friend.)—Howard Halle 

Photograph: Courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art; New York/Sheldan Collins

Where can I see it?: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

No one with any assurance can point to the first truly abstract painting in art history, but this one comes pretty close. It is, oddly, the result of deliberately slow product rollout, at least according to the Guggenheim. It turns out that well before he created this canvas, Kandinsky knew precisely where he wanted to go with respect to abstract, or non-objective, art, but he was concerned with public reaction. So in the paintings leading up to this one, he maintained tenuous connections to representation, before finally dispensing with them altogether here.—Howard Halle 

Photograph: Kristopher McKay

Where can I see it?: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Courbet’s painting of a reclining woman caused a scandal when it debuted at the Salon of 1866, with critics decrying the woman’s pose and wild hair. But Courbet’s realistic treatment of the subject won the approval of the Academy, and his work also inspired innovators of later movements, including Manet and Cézanne.—Heather Corcoran

Photograph: Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Gift of Erwin Davis

Where can I see it?: Whitney Museum of American Art

Gorky is a foundational figure of Abstract Expressionism—the link between European Surrealism and the rambunctious group of Americans who seized the reins of modern art and never looked back. But at its heart, his work is an art of memory, conditioned by his experience as a teenager who came to the United States in 1920 to escape the genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turks in his native Armenia. Although his father made it to this country a dozen years earlier, he left behind a son and a wife; the latter died of starvation. The trauma clung to Gorky for the rest of his life (which ended in suicide), and this painting, based on a family photo, is redolent of the past and the impossibility of escaping it.—Howard Halle

Photograph: Courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art; New York/ARS

Where can I see it?: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Velzquez’s portrait of his slave—that’s right, he owned the guy—is striking today, not only because it’s a rare Old Master depiction of a person of color, but also because of what it suggests about their relationship. De Pareja was of Moorish descent; a trained painter, he was Velzquez’s assistant. The steady gaze with which he holds the viewer, and his general comportment-—which could almost be called noble—indicates a partnership of equals, though his old, patched clothing says otherwise. He eventually set De Pareja free, though the latter would remain with his former master until the artist’s death. That choice only underscores the ambiguity surrounding this painting.—Howard Halle 

Photograph: Courtesy Purchase; Fletcher and Rogers Funds; and Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967); by exchange; supplemented by gifts from friends of the Museum; 1971

Where can I see it?: Museum of Modern Art

Throughout his career, Davis bridged the realism of Robert Henri and the Ashcan School to more modern impulses including Postimpressionism and Cubism. Inspired by the American city, Davis’s paintings of everyday objects, like this stylized bottle of mouthwash, presaged Pop Art by four decades.—Heather Corcoran

Photograph: Courtesy the Museum of Modern Art, NY. Mary Sisler Bequest (by exchange) and purchase

Where can I see it?: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For his take on Pandora, Symbolist painter Redon chose to portray the mythical woman on the verge of opening her container of evils, a frozen moment of idyll before its horrors are released—depicted here as a beautiful garden scene.—Heather Corcoran

Photograph: Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Alexander M. Bing

Where can I see it?: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This scene from Ovid’s Metamorphosis is one revisited numerous times by the Italian Renaissance painter known for his loose brushwork and vibrant colorism. Part of his series of “poesies” (poetry paintings), here he depicts Venus trying to hold back her beloved Adonis, modeling her bare back on a Roman relief sculpture.—Heather Corcoran

Photograph: Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Jules Bache Collection