PETER ROLFE MONKS
LARRY RIVERS: THE POET AND THE PAINTER
It is not an everyday occurrence that a modern poet bares for public
scrutiny the creative pulsing of his imagination and psyche. At most, he
releases veiled images, incoherent metaphors and elusive symbols. It is
equally rare for a twentieth-century artist to offer his viewers contemporary insights into his visual statements. In Larry Rivers' works the
observer is fortunate to find a confluence of information and imagery.
Rivers is a major figure among the group of New York expressionist
painters,' an artist whose crucible was a poisonous blend of staid
"academy" training at the easel and the maelstrom of literary ce'nac!e in
Lower Manhattan. There he mingled with poets 2 and writers of every
avant-garde position and became an intimate friend of the versatile
Frank O'Hara, poet ext raordinaire and Curator of Travelling Interna-
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Fig. 1
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Larry Rivers, On the Phone 11(1981)
Collection of the Artist.
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77
acrylic on canvas, 45 x 47½".
tional Exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Rivers'
shrill presence was recorded by O'Hara: "Into the art scene of the 50's
Larry came rather like a demented telephone. Nobody knew whether
they wanted it in the library, the kitchen or the toilet, but it was
electric." 3
One would not wish to claim that Rivers' poetic imagery and verse
have earned him the exultation of America's cultural critics. Too few
poems have appeared in print and what has been published is undated.
The verses, like his canvases and collages, have to be appreciated in their
own terms, but through all mediums run the vibrant threads of personal
experimentation and literal deja vu. Two poems in particular, intermesh
with his paintings in a symbiotic riot of concepts, All About Diana and
Small Portrait of Sheila Mae Lanharn.4
"What if! were to give you the new size of my hardon"
with this
ithyphallic proclamation in theeighteenth lineof AllAbout Diana,5 the
reader is catapulted into the imagery of On the Phone 1(1981) and On
Fig. 2
Larry Rivers .5 heilo (I 981). acrylic on canvas. 76 11m x 80 112'. Collection
of the Artist.
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The Phone 11(198 1). In the second one in particular robust male organs
sail across the watery canvas, they are levelled like the full-blown cannon
of battle-cruisers. Each carries its recognition tag: a date, a weekday, a
telephone number, or a friend's name. The phalluses are among a host of
images which Helen Harrison characterises as "doodles from the table
top that serves as his telephone pad in the Southampton studio or the
casual jottings in a notebook [that] float around the artist's figure like so
much mental flotsam and jetsam awaiting Rivers' salvaging interest." 6
A point that appears to have been overlooked is that the doodles may not
only be a subconscious recollection of whimsy for Rivers, but they
perhaps symbolise the act of dobdling, bearing in mind that in some
parts of the English speaking world "doodle" is a slang term for the male
reproductive organ.
Another instance of Rivers' mental activity finding expression in
plastic terms comes to us from the same poem All About Diana. Line
sixteen dedares:
Time ist (sic) a pink pearl Eberhard eraser.
Yiddish speakers in New York would not only include a German sounding "ist" for "is", they would articulate "Eberhard" as "everhard". 7
There is every reason to believe that the double entendre of "ever-hard
erasers" has a psychosexual connotation. In On the Phone I and On the
Phone II eraser-shaped attenuated objects remind the unwary visitor to
America's shores that a "rubber", which to the English speaking innocent is the generic term for eraser, has another identity; peeking coyly
out from beneath an eraser construct in On the Phone II, the silhouette
of a condom may be detected. Moreover, the eraser's unending rigidity
can be likened to the attitude of an energised mini-penis. And is it
accidental that Rivers appears in both paintings under discussion clad in
a pearl-pink shirt, reinforcing the dramatic priapism of the "pink pearl
Eberhard eraser"?
Rectangular configurations 8 are frequently interpolated into his
visual works and into his poetry. Lines seventeen and thirty of AllAbout
Diana read: "But thats (sic) only if qou (sic) continue the same oblong
tidbits," and "that ist (sic) in the long box filled with your boring
history." These verses are separated by sexual connotives such as "flaming and juicy" or "successful cockstand". The vagaries of the geometrical imputations are not of a nature to preclude the reader from inculcating sexual iconography into their forms.
The words "Banged And also oddly fanged" are curious liminal
traits with which to commence the portraiture of an intimate in Small
Portrait of Sheila Mae Lanham. The poem contains startling concor-
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dances with Rivers visualised concepts. In the first nine lines
are twenty-three in all - the reader learns that she is:
there
Willowy, Shapely, Ample
To cover other moments with other words
Pointed and Gawky, a walled back - Rivers' fatalism is proclaimed in the line "Nature's roll of the dice on
eyesight", and the myopia is detailed further:
Through 2 large pieces of remedial glass
What those soft points, the lids
The quivering blue in the eyes are doing - - Endowed with feline sensuousness, Sheila appears in two recent paint ings. Now and Then (1981) and Sheila (1981). The act of being
"banged" gives us no recourse to fact, supposition being the only guide,
and a crude one at that. On the other hand, the predicament of being
"oddly fanged" is evident in Sheila's impressive orthodontic display.
J IX
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larry Rivers. Ni,
iin ihen
(;olft'coon of the A rOst.
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198 I) acrylic on canvas. 76 1/ x
There is no disagreement with Rivers' textual interpretation of her
physical charms, or his corresponding evaluation of her stature pictoriaused: "Willowy" and "Shapely" in Sheila (upper right), then "Ample"°
in Now and Then; "Pointed" but not "Gawky" in Sheila (upper right).
yet "Gawky" but not "Pointed" in Sheila (lower right).
Rivers' pen and brush have no difficulaty in accepting the lottery of
life. Sheila's mercurial eyesight is announced laconically in lines six
through ten. The acceptance of the tare is evidenced by her portraiture in
Sheila and in Now and Then where corrective glazing is generously
spread.
Our poet and painter moves and lives as if responding to mirror
images, and on one occasion in All About Diana he proudly apostrophises the prism of his energizer, the written record: "Dear Diary as
Art
But his utterance to John Gruen in 1973 has more import, "I
feel that the relationship between life and art is nothing to be ashamed
of. It's my life that matters and my art is part of that.""
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Fig 4
Larry Ricrs, On the Phone I (1981), acrylic on canvas, 52 x 77". Van
Straaten Gallery, Chicago
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NOTES
'The best biographical sketches of Larry Rivers are to be found in the pages of S. Hunter,
Larry Rivers, New York, 1969; J. Gruen, The Party's over now. Reminiscences of the
Fifties. New York'sArtists, Writers, Musiciansand theirFriends, New York, 1972; F.
O'Hara, Art Chronicles 1954-1966, New York, 1975; I. Sandier, The New York
School. The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties, New York. 1978: and more recently,
Helen A. Harrison, Larry Rivers, New York, 1984. Since the artist is still very active,
there is no publication that reproduces all of his work. The monographs of Hunter and
Harrison contain the most important creations. Three of Rivers' paintings were on
display in 1967 at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South
Wales, see Two Decades of American Painting, An Exhibition, selected by Waldo
Rasmussen, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1967, nos. 74-76.
2 Rivers' nexus with contemporary poets is evidenced inter alia by his full-length nude
portrait Frank O'Hara (1954), sketches, a rebus-type canvas blazoning the poet's
words Sketch for Us (c. 1957), and Stones (1957), a series of lithographs where art and
poetry commingle. The friendship between Rivers and poet Kenneth Koch is documented in print and on canvas. Koch's handwriting squiggles paths for itself all over a
large oil and charcoal construct New York 1950-1 960 (1961). The poet's viewpoint
about the work is expressed in "A Conversation with Kenneth Koch" published in
Helen A. Harrison (ed.) Larry Rivers Performing for the Family, East Hampton, 1983,
pp. 9-12. Rivers' own ideas ring Out in "Larry Rivers on Collaboration," ibid: pp.
13-14. The exercise in collaborative creation was repeated in the mixed media. The Bed
(1982). Another interface with a poet friend is presented by Rivers in his rainbow style
Poem and Portrait of John Ashbery (1977-1982).
'Quoted by J. Gruen, "Down Memory Lane with Larry Rivers' Golden Oldies," Art News
(November, 1978), p. 85.
Edition in C. Haenlein (ed.), Larry Rivers. Ret rospektive. Zeichnungen, Hannover, 1980,
pp. 42 and 43, respectively. Excerpts are reproduced with strict conformity to Rivers'
capitalisation and punctuation.
'The artist portrayed a certain Diana Molinari in four poses in Me and My Shadow (1970).
cf. C. Haenlein (ed.). Larry Rivers. Ret rospektive. Bilder und Skulpturen, Hannover,
1980. p. 105 and once as Miss Popcorn (1972), cf. ibid., p. 85. She assisted him in
making videos in the seventies, see Helen A. Harrison (ed), Larry Rivers Performing
for the Family, pp. 4 and 17, and her recent study, Larry Rivers, p. 97.
6 Cf. Harrison, Larry Rivers, p. 103.
7 One recalls that Rivers is of Polish and Russian-Jewish heritage and his given name is
Yitzroch. His family name is Grossberg, cf. Harrison, Larry Rivers Performing for the
Family, p. 31.
4
'Curvilinear attitudes are so rare that when Rivers uses them the viewer cannot fail to
notice their application. Such an instance may be observed in Lucky Strike (1961)
where the painter, in his interpretation of the cigarette circular logo, was not able to
resist the temptation to straighten the curve.
'There exist other visible perceptions conceived by Rivers to represent her, but the
anatomical features are not as marked e.g. Sheila (1978), Cutting (1981), Drawing
(1981), Sheila Xeroxed (1981).
"One suspects that Sheila is the subject of Gary Indiana's allusion when he wrote
the artist - . - cuddled by a somewhat chunky young thing in a one-piece bathing
suit," p. 119 of "Larry Rivers Painter Faniilias." Art in America (December. 1983). pp.
118-124.
"Cf. J. Gruen, "Down Memory Lane with Larry Rivers" Golden Oldies," Art News
(November, 1978). p. 88.
Reproductions of Larry Rivers' work by courtesy of Marlborough Gallery Inc. New York.
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