Growing Larry Rivers, I realized, is not about planting a seed and watching it rise straight toward the sun. It is about letting something sprawl. Rivers, the quintessential second-generation Abstract Expressionist, grew sideways—like jazz, like a conversation that starts at 2 a.m. and ends with a saxophone in a bathtub.
The first time I saw a Larry Rivers painting, I thought it was a mistake. A nude that looked half-erased. A Washington Crossing the Delaware that felt like a burp at a funeral. The brushstrokes were loose, almost lazy, but the intention was razor-sharp. Growing Larry Rivers
To grow a Larry Rivers is to cultivate contradiction. He was a painter who loved sculpture. A serious artist who played the fool. A Jewish kid from the Bronx who painted the Founding Fathers. He took de Kooning’s swagger and added a pop-art wink before pop art had a name. He grew in the margins of the Cedar Tavern, in the space between a figurative line and an abstract smear. Growing Larry Rivers, I realized, is not about