Nassau County Museum of Art’s newest exhibit aims to bring the colors of the rainbow to life, Executive Director Charles Riley said at the opening Friday.
“A rainbow comes, but is only brief,” Riley said. “We know what makes a rainbow, we know how to explain it, yet we look at it with a kind of wonder. It doesn’t come all the time, and most wonderfully, it doesn’t last that long.”
The Roslyn Harbor museum’s latest exhibit, “True Colors,” uses many mediums, styles and techniques to capture the emotional expression of color, ranging from portraits by Henri Matisse and “St. Sebastian” by Titian, considered the original champion of color in art, to neon sculptures by Deborah Kass and sparkling metals in multiple shades by Miya Ando.
The full range of color’s magic is on display in this exuberant show of over 100 works from the nineteenth century to this moment’s hottest talents.
Riley said to hang some of the larger pieces in the exhibit in Gallery No. 2, the walls were rebuilt and reinforced to manage the weight of the colorful abstracts.
The show also features a color woodcut on cream paper by Wassily Kandinsky, a pastel by Joan Mitchell, an infamous Campbell’s Soup work by Andy Warhol done in all black, the “In the Garden of Love” series by Robert Indiana, a bright 3D work by Sylvia Stone and a color screenprint by Roy Lichtenstein.
“This show is not available on your mobile devices,” Riley said. “That cannot be reproduced in a photograph, that cannot be described — the words cannot do it. Bring your friends, bring the people you know who love art and love color, because color is very special.”
Reach reporter Amelia Camurati by email at acamurati@theislandnow.com, by phone at 516-307-1045, ext. 215, or follow her on Twitter @acamurati.
