I have many favorite artists but I think that if I had my choice of any painting I’d choose the red Matisse in the Hermitage.

Well, it’s a toss-up between Rousseau and his tigers and jungles and Manet (no, not Monet) and his French people sitting around on the grass. But actually, it is my godson’s work in pencil, ink, crayon, chalk or paint that just knocks me out.

Tintoretto, for his magnificence; Giorgione, runner-up, for his. But when I am in a gossipy mood, I like to hang out with Gentile Bellini — nowhere near their class, not even the best painter in his immediate family — because he is so cleverly anecdotal.

Robert Rauschenberg

Fortunately for me, my favorite artists also happen to be my really close friends: William Dunlap, John Alexander and James Surls. Dunlap serves on the board of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art with me, and is a phenomenally generous soul and walking performance-art piece in addition to being a really wonderful painter. Like Eli Manning, for whom he just did a huge Mississippi landscape, I am blessed to have many of his canvasses. (His wife, Linda Burgess, and daughter, Maggie Dunlap, are also gifted artists — I call them the von Dunlaps.) Roberta Smith compared Alexander to Durer after a show of his drawings at the Beadleston Gallery in Manhattan, and his retrospective at the Smithsonian last year was an amazing show (with an amazing book).

Surls, like Alexander, grew up in Texas and is a soulful writer as well as being a genius of a sculptor. One of my favorite (and most hilarious) photographs features Alexander and New Orleans art dealer Arthur Roger posing as Surls sculptures in my garden – oh, how I wish they were the real thing! The real thing is actually available for viewing right now on the Park Avenue median between 50th and 57th Streets as part of the New York City Parks Public Art Program.

I also really love the photography of Sally Mann, who is one of the nicest people I have ever met.

My favorite dead guys? The Spaniards: Goya, Velasquez and Melendez, whose stunning still-lifes are at the Prado. Melendez’s gorgeous self-portrait is at the Louvre.