Larry Rivers and Reincarnation
Larry Rivers, On the Phone (1955)
There is a common idea among major artists that they are part of a continuum of artists with whom they feel at one. So much so, that they can easily take on each other’s identity in a painting: Manet as Rubens, Matisse as Rembrandt etc. Art historians hardly ever recognize these switches and are generally unaware of them. Listen, though, to Larry Rivers, a twentieth-century American artist:
“As I saw it, I was an artist in a drama about the history of art. I made the appropriate gestures; I played the role of connector from caveman artist up through the present. You name them, I was them.”1
Keep this in mind when you look at art from any century. It’s what great artists have in common that matters; not what makes them unique.
1. Memorial Address, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Sept. 16th, 1981, cited in Barbara Rose, “Larry Rivers: Painter of Modern Life” in Rose and Jacquelyn Days Serwer, Larry Rivers: Art and Artist (Washington, DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art) 2002, p. 47
Posted 27 Jan 2011: Artist as Another ArtistRivers, Larry
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