//free\\ — Growing 1981 Larry Rivers

Rivers never hid his love of the human figure. In many versions of the Growing series from 1981, the base of the plant curls inward in a way that mimics torsos or embracing limbs. Rivers is using botany as a disguise to paint the one subject that obsessed him for 50 years: the awkward, vital, decaying human body.

The keyword is searched by those who have stumbled upon a strange image and need to understand why a drawing of a plant has the emotional weight of a Greek tragedy. growing 1981 larry rivers

Compared to the Neo-Expressionists of the early 1980s, Growing is remarkably restrained. Where Schnabel used broken plates and aggressive scale, Rivers uses a modest, intimate format. Compared to the Pop Art he helped pioneer, Growing is deeply subjective. It lacks the cool irony of Andy Warhol’s Oxidation Paintings (also from the late 1970s), which used metallic paint and urine to simulate decay. Rivers’ decay is organic and sad, not mechanical and cynical. The painting is closer in spirit to the late works of Philip Guston, who also returned to a clumsy, cartoonish figuration in the 1970s to explore existential themes. Like Guston’s Painting, Smoking, Eating (1973), Rivers’ Growing finds profundity in the awkward, bodily act of living. Rivers never hid his love of the human figure

: Rivers filmed his daughters at six-month intervals, often focusing on their developing bodies and asking them intimate, probing questions about puberty and sexuality. Artistic and Ethical Controversy The keyword is searched by those who have