Upcoming Show • March 4 to April 24, 2021
(Window Only)
PURPLE AND YELLOW: OPTICAL POP
ART FORUM ON ZOOM
Thursday, April 8 at 7:30 pm
Click to register
PURPLE AND YELLOW: Optical Pop
As white, purple, and yellow crocuses peek through the snow and lead the way for other flowers, Gallery A3 devotes its March/April window display to artworks that play a rich range of purple tones against various shades of yellow. The art of PURPLE and YELLOW: Optical Pop includes painting, photography, and photographic montage and collage as well as three-dimensional work, all installed in the windows of Gallery A3 and the adjacent GoBerry Frozen Yogurt in downtown Amherst.
While hues that gallery artists employ may edge toward shades of blue and tinges of orange—to draw on the visual punch of pairs of complementary colors—in this exhibit, purple and yellow rule.
PURPLE certainly stakes out strong claims for royalty in cultures around the world, from the rare Tyrian purple of ancient Greece and Rome, to the deep purple murasaki of Japan, to the caracol of Mixtec people of Central and South America. And evidence for charges of treason brought against Sir Thomas Cromwell by King Henry the Eighth is that he owned a pair of purple tights. But purple is also a color of democratization, with the development of popular synthetic dyes in Victorian times meaning everyone could wear shades of purple, from magenta to mauve. Today, purple continues to hold power, in our era of politically polarized blue and red.
Of course, YELLOW is no slouch in its regal symbolism. Early laws of the Tang dynasty declared one particular shade of yellow an imperial color, reserved for the royal family and forbidden to common people. And along with the age-old allure of metallic gold, there’s the implicit warning in the lurid yellow of today’s plastic CAUTION tape.
What happens when these colors join forces? What optical effects emerge and what stories unfold? Take a look at Gallery A3’s window exhibit for March and April—and see PURPLE and YELLOW come together.
As white, purple, and yellow crocuses peek through the snow and lead the way for other flowers, Gallery A3 devotes its March/April window display to artworks that play a rich range of purple tones against various shades of yellow. The art of PURPLE and YELLOW: Optical Pop includes painting, photography, and photographic montage and collage as well as three-dimensional work, all installed in the windows of Gallery A3 and the adjacent GoBerry Frozen Yogurt in downtown Amherst.
While hues that gallery artists employ may edge toward shades of blue and tinges of orange—to draw on the visual punch of pairs of complementary colors—in this exhibit, purple and yellow rule.
PURPLE certainly stakes out strong claims for royalty in cultures around the world, from the rare Tyrian purple of ancient Greece and Rome, to the deep purple murasaki of Japan, to the caracol of Mixtec people of Central and South America. And evidence for charges of treason brought against Sir Thomas Cromwell by King Henry the Eighth is that he owned a pair of purple tights. But purple is also a color of democratization, with the development of popular synthetic dyes in Victorian times meaning everyone could wear shades of purple, from magenta to mauve. Today, purple continues to hold power, in our era of politically polarized blue and red.
Of course, YELLOW is no slouch in its regal symbolism. Early laws of the Tang dynasty declared one particular shade of yellow an imperial color, reserved for the royal family and forbidden to common people. And along with the age-old allure of metallic gold, there’s the implicit warning in the lurid yellow of today’s plastic CAUTION tape.
What happens when these colors join forces? What optical effects emerge and what stories unfold? Take a look at Gallery A3’s window exhibit for March and April—and see PURPLE and YELLOW come together.
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ADDITIONAL LINKS: Find visit us on Instagram, Facebook, and our new Vimeo page. Amherst Media: Pictures at an Exhibition: Video Interview with Constance Hamilton Daily Hampshire Gazette: Art, demystified: ‘Pictures at an exhibition’ features TV interviews with artists in Amherst (featuring Constance Hamilton) |
ARTISTS IN COMMUNITY
Forums and videos are part of the Artists in Community program. This program is supported in part by a grant from the Amherst Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. 
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