My first car was a red 1954 MGTF. It was so sweet I would get notes left on my windshield like “I crave your car.”

Those were in my college days. Now I drive a red Mercedes so one could say I like red. But so does just about everyone else. Who wouldn’t like to drive a hot red Ferrari?

The world loves the color red and so does the Nassau County Museum of Art which is just opened a show called “Seeing Red: Renoir to Warhol. If you want to know the truth I had very low expectations about this show realizing that a local museum does not have the curatorial power to borrow major works from major museums. But this was one of the finest art shows I have seen in years.

The show contained works by major artists including Pierre_Auguste Renoir, Salvador Dali, Marc Chagall, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist, Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol, Alex Katz, David Hockney, and Robert Indiana.

It is not clear to me how the museum borrowed such treasures but they did. Maybe the Chinese are right in saying that red is a lucky color. I got to enjoy David Hockney’s “Red Celia” which was juxtaposed with Fairfield Porter’s “Elizabeth in a Red Chair.” Porter’s painting shows his youngest daughter seated comfortably in the living room of their home at 49 South Main Street in Southampton.

In the same room there is a Renoir, next to a Robert Indiana sculpture, next to a Marc Chagall, next to an Andy Warhol Campbell Soup. And across the room there is a Jasper Johns “Savarin” 1982. And that’s just the first room.

Other rooms had other gems from de Kooning, Pollack, Katz and Rosenquist.

Not all of the works were from well-known artist. My favorite was by Jacob Skornik titled “La Belle Ferronniere (after Leonardo da Vinci), 2023. Skornik selects paintings from the masters of the past , paints a detail, in this case the face, and then sprinkles the piece with diamond dust.

There are two reasons the show was so appealing. 1) The art was not your typical over sized canvases one sees at the Whitney or MoMA. These were all more human sized. Last week I saw a show at MoMA which contained four monumental sized canvases by Alex Katz called “Seasons.” They were all 10 to 20 feet long and about 8 feet tall. And the impact was meaningless. Contrast this with the 12 inch by 12 inch painting by Renoir at the Nassau County show of a girl in a red dress which was rich, heartfelt and real.

2) The theme of this show was simple, it was about the color red. This made the whole viewing experience comprehensible. The docent who was giving the lecture mentioned that artists, especially abstract expressionists ,do not like to say what the meaning of their painting is. But I think most of the viewing public is not highly educated when it comes to art which leaves them nonplussed and scratching their heads when they view something like a Pollack drip painting or a Jasper John’s “Painting With Two Balls.” The crowds were so large at this show because they all knew that red is something one can understand without having a degree in fine art.

Bravo to the Nassau County Museum of Art. This show is hot, sexy, powerful and filled with energy, just like the color red.