Red and Yellow (Invitation to a Halloween Costume Party)

Nancy took a photograph somewhere on her travels — perhaps Buenos Aires, perhaps a masquerade night in a city that still believes in ceremony — and she carried that image home. Then she began her real work: stripping away the ordinary until only the feeling remained. What emerged is this: a woman standing alone in a crowd, drink in hand, lit from every direction by a room that seems to breathe gold. The Fernet-Branca column rises like a totem at the left edge, a marker of place and time. Behind the young woman, others drift — a woman in a wide-brimmed hat, a mustachioed figure in orange, bodies half-swallowed by drapery and gilded molding. The chandelier overhead burns like a small sun. Nobody is quite connected. Everyone is present. It is the specific loneliness and aliveness of a night out, held perfectly in oil paint. Nancy has always said her job is to begin the story and let the viewer take it forward. Here, she hands you the golden threshold and asks: who are these people to each other, and where does the night take them next?