George Condo – Shades of Madness

Hung up high up in the Harrison Room of the Redwood, in a surprising confrontation with the early American portraits of white men, George Condo’s painting of a nude woman, Shades of Madness, addressed the library’s readers through the summer of 2017. The portrait was a site-specific intervention that formed part of the Condo “Newport Sexx Festival” exhibition curated by Dodie Kazanjian. Exectutive Director Benedict Leca explained to RI Public Radio: “This is quite a conservative town in many ways and this is a dramatic representation so it’s going to cause certain people to feel discomfort…all these pieces ask you to reconsider propriety, decorum, entrenched biases.”