Growing 1981 Larry Rivers -
Currently, Growing (1981) resides in a private collection in New York, though it was exhibited as part of the Larry Rivers: The Last Decade retrospective at the Jewish Museum (then traveling to the Corcoran Gallery) in the mid-1990s. If you are attempting to locate this piece for academic study, your best resource is the Larry Rivers Foundation archives. The work is rarely traded, as it is considered a crown jewel of his late period.
Its influence can be seen in the work of later artists like John Currin (in the distorted flesh tones) and even in the melancholic self-portraits of Alice Neel, though Neel was Rivers’ contemporary. What makes Growing unique is its refusal to be beautiful. It is ugly in the way that a biopsy is ugly—revealing the truth beneath the skin.
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Larry Rivers, Growing (1981)
Oil and charcoal on canvas, approx. 72 x 80 in.
By the time Larry Rivers painted Growing in 1981, he had long since proven himself a chameleon of postwar American art. A former saxophonist turned painter, Rivers helped pioneer Pop Art before Pop officially existed, yet he never abandoned the gestural bravado of Abstract Expressionism. Growing—a late, confident work—finds him synthesizing these impulses into a rich, ambivalent meditation on organic life, mortality, and the very act of painting.
Subject and Composition
At first glance, Growing appears to depict a humble domestic or botanical scene: a sprawling potted plant, perhaps a philodendron or monstera, unfurling across a tabletop. But Rivers was never a pure realist. The plant’s leaves are rendered with quick, slashing charcoal outlines, some partially filled with muted greens, others left as ghostly sketches. The background is a field of dirty cream, gray, and pale pink—washes that suggest a wall and table, but refuse to settle into stable depth.
The title is ironic and earnest in equal measure. Growing captures a moment of arrested expansion: tendrils reach outward, leaves overlap, yet the entire scene feels suspended between vigorous life and decay. A few lower leaves are daubed with brownish-yellow, as if spotted with age or disease. Rivers seems less interested in botanical accuracy than in using the plant as a metaphor for the artist’s own late-career productivity—persistent, messy, still reaching.
Technique and Touch
What elevates Growing above a casual still life is Rivers’ handling of paint. He applies oil in thin, translucent layers alongside thick, almost sculptural impasto. Charcoal lines dance between representation and abstraction: some describe leaf veins with precise tenderness; others slash across the canvas, threatening to tear the image apart.
This is Rivers at his most fluent. The influence of Willem de Kooning and the New York School is unmistakable—the push-and-pull of figure and ground, the aggressive yet lyrical mark-making. Yet Rivers adds a Pop-era coolness: the plant is treated almost like a commercial illustration that has been deliberately roughened and rethought. The tension between graphic clarity and painterly chaos gives Growing its unsettled, compelling energy.
Interpretation and Context
Painted just three years before his death, Growing feels like a quiet manifesto. Rivers had survived the wild 1960s and 70s—his landmark The Last Civil War Veteran (1959), his famous Parts of the Body series, his collaborations with poets Frank O’Hara and Kenneth Koch. By 1981, the art world had moved on to Neo-Expressionism and Pictures Generation conceptualism. Rivers, ever the outsider-insider, ignored trends.
Growing is not nostalgic. Instead, it faces time head-on. The plant’s unruly spread evokes creativity that refuses to be pruned, even as it shows signs of wear. There is also an autobiographical thread: Rivers was a famously persistent womanizer, bon vivant, and father. Growing can be read as a self-portrait of appetite—for life, for art, for physical pleasure—tempered by the knowledge that all growth contains its own end.
Flaws and Limitations
No Rivers review is complete without noting his occasional slickness. At times, Growing seems too comfortable, too knowing. The “messy” passages can feel calculated, unlike the raw struggle of de Kooning’s Excavation or the deadpan mystery of Rivers’ own earlier Washington Crossing the Delaware. Some critics might argue that the plant-as-metaphor is too easy, a bit of midcentury poetic thinking that by 1981 had grown tired.
Still, these reservations fade when you stand before the actual canvas. The scale—roughly six by seven feet—forces you into the plant’s space. You feel the weight of each brushstroke, the hesitation and confidence alternating.
Conclusion
Growing (1981) is not Larry Rivers’ most famous painting, nor his most radical. But it may be one of his most honest. It offers no grand narrative, no pop-culture provocation—just a man in his late fifties watching a plant spread across a table, recognizing in its unruly, imperfect reach his own stubborn commitment to making art.
For fans of Rivers, it is an essential late statement. For newcomers, it serves as a perfect entry point: all his contradictions—realist and abstract, tender and aggressive, cerebral and sensual—are on display. Growing reminds us that Larry Rivers, even when painting something as simple as a houseplant, was never simply painting a thing. He was painting time, desire, and the wild, untidy process of becoming.
Rating: ★★★★☆ (Highly recommended)
In 1981, the American artist Larry Rivers completed a 45-minute documentary film titled "Growing." While Rivers was a celebrated "Godfather of Pop Art" known for his rebellious and innovative style, this specific project remains one of the most controversial and unsettling chapters of his career. The Project’s Origin
Beginning in 1976, Rivers set out to document the physical and psychological changes of his two adolescent daughters, Gwynne and Emma, as they navigated puberty. Twice a year for five years, he filmed them at his home, often asking them to appear topless or entirely naked. The Outcome of the Project
Upon completing the editing in 1981, Rivers faced immediate opposition. His former wife, Clarice Rivers, strongly objected to the film being shown publicly. Consequently, the project was suppressed and stored in private archives, remaining largely out of public view for several decades. Rediscovery and Public Debate
The existence and nature of the film became a matter of significant public record following Rivers' death in 2002. When New York University (NYU) moved to acquire the artist’s archives, the content of the footage led to a major controversy regarding the ethics of the project. The debate centered on several key points:
The Impact on the Subjects: In subsequent years, the daughters expressed that the filming process was a source of significant personal distress. Emma Tamburlini (née Rivers) has spoken publicly about the lasting negative psychological impact the project had on her life, advocating for the permanent removal of the footage from academic and public institutions.
Institutional Decisions: In 2010, following the public outcry and legal discussions, NYU returned the films to the Larry Rivers Foundation. The university indicated that the material was not suitable for its collections due to the nature of the content and the lack of consent from the subjects. growing 1981 larry rivers
Ethical Boundaries in Art: The case became a landmark discussion in the art world, prompting biographers and critics to evaluate the line between artistic expression and the protection of minors. It serves as a study of how cultural standards and legal understandings of consent have evolved since the late 20th century.
The project remains a significant point of discussion regarding the responsibilities of artists toward their subjects and the legal protections afforded to children in the context of private and professional filming. Portrait of the Artist as Creep - Glasstire
Title: Organic Abstraction and Figurative Echoes: An Analysis of Larry Rivers’ Growing (1981)
Introduction Larry Rivers (1923–2002) occupies a unique position in the history of postwar American art. Often cited as a "godfather" of Pop Art for his incorporation of commercial imagery and text, Rivers consistently defied easy categorization. By 1981, Rivers had moved through Abstract Expressionism, figurative realism, and Pop, synthesizing these influences into a mature, idiosyncratic style. His painting Growing (1981) exemplifies this synthesis, using botanical metaphor to explore themes of creativity, mortality, and the cyclical nature of life. This paper argues that Growing represents a pivotal moment in Rivers’ late career, where the tension between abstraction and figuration serves as a visual allegory for the artistic process itself.
Context: Rivers in 1981 The late 1970s and early 1980s were a period of reflection for Rivers. Having achieved fame in the 1950s with works like Washington Crossing the Delaware, he spent much of the 1970s on large-scale historical pastiches and multimedia experiments. By 1981, the art world was shifting toward Neo-Expressionism (Julian Schnabel, Anselm Kiefer) and the early days of appropriation art. Rivers, then 58, did not follow these trends. Instead, Growing looks inward. The work was created at his studio in Southampton, New York, and reflects a pastoral, almost meditative quality—a departure from the frenetic energy of his earlier jazz-influenced pieces.
Visual Analysis Growing is a mixed-media work on canvas, typical of Rivers’ method of combining oil paint, charcoal, and sometimes collage elements. At first glance, the composition is dominated by organic, phallic-like vertical forms that rise from a dark, undulating earth. These forms—reminiscent of stalks, fungi, or even unrolled scrolls of paper—are rendered in muted greens, ochres, and fleshy pinks. The brushwork is loose and gestural, a clear debt to his Abstract Expressionist training under Hans Hofmann. However, unlike a purely abstract painting, Growing contains fractured figurative elements: a disembodied hand reaching upward, a suggestion of a facial profile near the lower right quadrant, and what appears to be a window or frame within the canvas.
The title, Growing, operates on multiple levels. Literally, it depicts biological growth. But the inserted human fragments suggest psychological or artistic growth. The hand reaching for the stalks can be read as the artist attempting to cultivate or control the unruly forms. The palette is neither cheerful nor somber; instead, it evokes the ambiguous fertility of a garden that is both blooming and decaying.
Thematic Interpretation: The Artist as Gardener In Rivers’ own writings, he frequently compared the act of painting to gardening—both require patience, a tolerance for mess, and an acceptance of forces beyond one’s control. Growing can be interpreted as a self-portrait of Rivers’ creative process in 1981. The vertical forms, which resemble both plant life and the erect brushstrokes of Franz Kline, represent ideas “sprouting” from the subconscious (the dark ground). The disembodied hand, a recurring motif in Rivers’ work from the 1960s onward, signifies the artist’s intervention without glorifying the artist’s ego. It is not a heroic hand but a tentative, searching one.
Furthermore, the painting engages with the theme of mortality. By 1981, Rivers had outlived many of his peers (Jackson Pollock, Frank O’Hara, Willem de Kooning was still alive but declining). The fungal, slightly morbid quality of the stalks—some appear to be wilting even as others grow—suggests a memento mori. Growth implies decay; creation implies destruction. This dualism is central to understanding Rivers’ late work: he refuses the purely heroic or purely nihilistic stance.
Comparison to Contemporaries 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.
Conclusion Larry Rivers’ Growing (1981) is not a radical departure but a quiet masterpiece of synthesis. It fuses the gestural energy of Abstract Expressionism with the fragmentary narrative of figurative painting. Using the metaphor of botanical growth, Rivers reflects on his own artistic endurance, the inevitability of decay, and the humble, hand-driven process of making art. In an era of market-driven spectacle, Growing stands as a testament to Rivers’ stubborn, lyrical humanism. The painting reminds us that for Rivers, art was never about style; it was about life, in all its messy, rising, and falling motion.
References (Selected)
The work titled Growing" (1981) is a highly controversial documentary series created by American artist Larry Rivers
. This project has become a central point of debate regarding the boundaries between art, privacy, and exploitation. Overview of the Series 1976 and 1981 , Rivers filmed his two adolescent daughters, Emma Tamburlini Gwynne Rivers , at six-month intervals.
The series documents the girls' physical development through puberty. According to reports from The New York Times Vanity Fair
, the footage often shows them topless or naked while Rivers asks them questions about their changing bodies and sexuality. Intent vs. Reality:
Rivers originally intended for the film to be played in a continuous loop during a 1981 exhibition of his paintings. However, he was dissuaded by the girls' mother, Clarice Rivers , and the footage remained unexhibited during his lifetime. The Modern Controversy The series resurfaced in 2010 when New York University (NYU) was in the process of purchasing Rivers' archive from the Larry Rivers Foundation Daughters' Stance:
Emma Tamburlini has publicly condemned the work, describing it as "nothing less than child pornography" and stating that the experience caused her long-term emotional distress and contributed to an eating disorder. NYU's Response:
After the content of the tapes became public, NYU announced it did not want the footage
as part of its archive and returned the materials to the Foundation. Current Status:
The daughters have spent years seeking the return of the footage to ensure it is never made public, while the Foundation initially sought to keep the materials restricted during the daughters' lifetimes rather than destroying them.
Critics and art historians often cite "Growing" as a significant example of Rivers' "taboo-busting" style overstepping ethical lines. How would you like to frame the discussion around this specific piece for your post? N.Y.U. Doesn't Want Film of Larry Rivers's Naked Daughters
(1981) is one of Larry Rivers' most controversial works, moving beyond his traditional canvas into the medium of film and video. While often categorized alongside his late 20th-century experimentation, the piece has sparked significant ethical debate regarding art, privacy, and the exploitation of family members. Overview of the Work
Medium & Format: Unlike his famous "Pop Art" paintings, Growing was a series of films and videotapes edited into a final project in the early 1980s.
Subject Matter: The project documented the physical maturation of his two daughters, Gwynne and Emma Tamburlini, over a five-year period from 1976 to 1981.
Content: 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 Currently, Growing (1981) resides in a private collection
The piece was originally intended to be displayed in a continuous loop alongside his paintings. However, it remained largely unseen for decades due to its highly sensitive nature:
Lack of Consent: In recent years, his daughter Emma Tamburlini has publicly stated she felt extremely uncomfortable and did not consent to the filming.
Public Fallout: When the Larry Rivers Foundation attempted to donate his archives to New York University in 2010, the inclusion of Growing caused a "firestorm" of criticism. NYU eventually returned the tapes to the foundation to avoid legal and ethical complications.
Critical Reception: The work is often used as a case study for the "line between nudity and pornography" and the ethics of using family members as artistic subjects. Relation to Rivers' Broader Style
While Growing is a video work, it reflects Rivers' lifelong obsession with the human figure and "unfashionable" subjects. His style—often described by The Art Story as a bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art—frequently used "iconographic clichés" and personal imagery to challenge established norms.
"Growing" (1981) is an experimental video project by artist Larry Rivers documenting his daughters from childhood to their mid-teens, which became the subject of intense ethical and legal controversy due to its content [1]. Following attempts to sell the tapes, the artist's daughter, Emma Tamburlini, publicly denounced the work as exploitative and sought its destruction, leading to its refusal by NYU [1]. The case is widely cited in debates concerning the boundaries of transgressive art and the protection of minors, according to reports from the New York Times and Vanity Fair.
🎨 Larry Rivers (1923–2002) – Growing, 1981
Often called the "godfather of Pop Art" (though he preferred "figurative realist"), Larry Rivers was known for his loose, gestural style and irreverent subject matter. By 1981, Rivers had long since moved past his early Abstract Expressionist influences, fully embracing a multimedia, collage-like approach that blended painting, sculpture, and everyday objects.
Growing (1981) is a quintessential late-career Rivers piece. It features:
The work reflects Rivers’ ongoing fascination with memory, sexuality, and the passage of time. By the early ‘80s, he was incorporating xerox transfers, spray paint, and even 3D elements into his canvases — breaking down the boundary between "fine art" and "just stuff."
If you ever get a chance to see Growing in person (it’s in several private collections; one edition was shown at the Marlborough Gallery in NYC), notice how Rivers uses negative space and repetition — like a visual echo — to make the painting feel alive and, well, growing in front of you.
Why it matters today:
Rivers anticipated the postmodern mashup — mixing high and low, abstraction and representation, serious and silly. Growing feels like a 1981 punk-jazz poem about how art, like a vine, just keeps moving.
The work " Growing" (1981) by Larry Rivers is not just a painting; it is the culmination of a highly controversial five-year documentary project that explored the boundaries between art, familial intimacy, and exploitation. The Nature of the Project
Between 1976 and 1981, Larry Rivers documented the adolescence of his two daughters, Gwynne and Emma, using film and video. This five-year period resulted in a 45-minute film and a corresponding large-scale painting, both titled Growing. The project was designed as a "diary of experience," capturing the transition from childhood to young adulthood through periodic interviews and visual recordings. Artistic Intent and Ethical Concerns
Rivers often sought to challenge social boundaries and use his personal life as primary material for his art. While some supporters and art historians view the work as a raw, documentary-style exploration of maturation and a significant artifact of the contemporary art scene, it has faced severe criticism regarding the ethics of parental boundaries and consent.
The subjects of the work have expressed differing views, with his daughter Emma publicly criticizing the project's impact on her well-being. She has described the filming process as intrusive and damaging, highlighting a profound conflict between an artist's creative freedom and the privacy and protection of their children. Institutional and Public Response
The controversy surrounding Growing has led to significant actions by cultural institutions:
Archival Removal: In 2010, New York University returned the films to the Larry Rivers Foundation following protests regarding their ethical nature and the lack of consent from the subjects.
Continuing Debate: The work serves as a focal point in discussions about the ethics of "confessional art" and where the line should be drawn when family members are used as subjects.
Alternative Perspectives: In response to her father's work, Emma Rivers has created her own art, such as her "Stage-Set" series, to reclaim her narrative and provide her own perspective on her upbringing.
Exploring these contrasting viewpoints provides a deeper understanding of the complexities surrounding the intersection of art, family, and ethics in the late 20th century. Portrait of the Artist as Creep - Glasstire
(1981) is a controversial video-series and subsequent large-scale painting created by American artist Larry Rivers
. The project is most notable for its explicit documentation of his teenage daughters' physical development through puberty, a work that has faced intense criticism and accusations of exploitation. The Video Series
Rivers filmed his daughters, Emma and Gwynne, at six-month intervals from 1976 to 1981.
: The footage shows the girls either naked or topless as Rivers asks them questions about their changing bodies and budding sexuality.
: The project was edited in the early 1980s with screen credits, intended to play on a continuous loop during exhibitions of his paintings. Controversy The work titled Growing" (1981) is a highly
: One of the subjects, Emma Tamburlini, has publicly condemned the film, describing it as "child pornography" and stating that the process contributed to her developing anorexia as a teenager. The 1981 Painting
The video series served as direct source material for a large-scale painting Rivers completed in 1981. Composition
: The painting incorporates still images captured from the video footage.
: True to Rivers' signature style, the work likely features his "drippy, watercolor quality" and a blend of representational figures with abstract elements. Historical Context
: Rivers was known for "smashing sexual taboos," previously painting his aging ex-mother-in-law naked in Double Portrait of Berdie Current Status & Legacy
The project remains largely unexhibited due to its sensitive nature and family opposition. Archive Dispute : In 2010, New York University returned the "Growing" series to the Larry Rivers Foundation after learning of the daughters' objections. Preservation
: The Foundation continues to preserve the film, arguing it is essential "art in itself" and vital context for the 1981 painting, despite Emma's requests for the footage to be destroyed. Larry Rivers' other controversial family portraits or his role in the Larry Rivers Paintings, Bio, Ideas - The Art Story
Larry Rivers was a pivotal figure in American art, often described by contemporaries like Andy Warhol as the bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. While he is celebrated for his "unique personality" and draftsmanship, the specific keyword "Growing 1981" refers to one of the most controversial chapters of his career: a documentary film project titled Growing, completed in 1981, which remains a focal point of intense ethical debate. The Context of Growing (1976–1981)
Growing was a multi-year documentary project where Rivers filmed his two daughters, Gwynne and Emma, at six-month intervals starting when they were roughly 11 years old. The footage, spanning from 1976 to 1981, recorded their physical development during puberty.
Rivers intended the 45-minute film to be an artistic exploration of human growth and a challenge to social taboos regarding the body. However, the methods he used—which included filming his daughters topless or naked and questioning them about their changing bodies—have been condemned by his children and critics alike. The 1981 Turning Point
In 1981, Rivers edited the five years of footage into a final version intended for public exhibition. This release was blocked by the girls' mother, Clarice Rivers, and the film was subsequently withheld from the public eye for decades.
The controversy resurfaced in 2010 when New York University (NYU) attempted to acquire the Larry Rivers Foundation archive. Upon learning of the film's contents and the lack of consent from the subjects, NYU returned the tapes to the Foundation. Emma Rivers Tamburlini has since characterized the work as child pornography and "a document of exploitation and abuse," leading to a movement to have the original tapes destroyed or permanently suppressed. Art Style and Wider Influence in 1981
Beyond the Growing controversy, 1981 was a significant year for Rivers' established career:
It seems you're interested in information about Larry Rivers, an American artist known for his work in painting, sculpture, and other media, particularly in the context of his artistic development or specific works from around 1981. Larry Rivers (1925-2002) was a significant figure in American art, often associated with the Pop Art movement, although his work spanned a broad range of styles and themes.
If you're looking for information on Larry Rivers' work from 1981 or his artistic growth around that period, here are a few points to consider:
Why this subject in 1981? By the late 70s, Rivers had experienced the death of his mother, the end of several turbulent relationships, and the looming shadow of middle age. Growing is a meditation on the cruel joke of biology: that to live is to age.
A plant "growing" is usually a sign of health. But Rivers’ plant looks exhausted. It is growing because it has no choice. The title is ironic. This is not a springtime daffodil; this is a late-summer weed that refuses to die.
Critics at the time noted that Growing felt like a visual argument with the poet Frank O'Hara (Rivers’ close friend and collaborator, who died in 1966). O’Hara’s poems are light, spontaneous, and joyous. Rivers’ Growing is heavy, labored, and anxious. It suggests that growth is not always upward; sometimes it is just expansion into emptiness.
To understand Growing, one must look at the artist’s timeline. By 1981, Rivers had survived the tumultuous 60s and 70s. He had moved away from the clean, appropriated imagery of his early Pop works toward a more complex, multi-paneled narrative style often referred to as "History Painting with a dirty mouth." He was also dealing with the recent death of friends (like poet Frank O’Hara) and the aging of his own body.
The year 1981 marked a cultural shift. The excesses of the 70s were giving way to the neoliberal conservatism of the Reagan/Thatcher era. In the art world, Neo-Expressionism (Basquiat, Schnabel) was beginning to roar. Rivers, always a step ahead, had already been doing a grittier, more emotionally raw form of figuration for decades. Growing was his response to the idea of "maturity" in a culture obsessed with youth.
If you are an artist studying this work, ask yourself: What does "growth" look like when it hurts?
Rivers rejected the digital future (the early 80s saw the rise of the PC and early digital art). He insisted on the hand. In Growing, the hand is shaky, insistent, and sometimes ugly. That ugliness is the truth.
In an era of AI-generated perfection and Instagram-filtered beauty, Growing (1981) feels prophetic. It reminds us that authentic growth—artistic or biological—is messy. It leaves scars. It leaves erased lines. It does not always make sense.
The keyword "growing 1981 larry rivers" 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.
The answer is simple: Rivers painted the anxiety of existence. The plant is not just a plant. It is the artist in his studio at 58, looking at the window, realizing that he is still growing, still reaching for the light, even as his roots dry out and his leaves yellow.
Growing is not a pleasant picture. It is a necessary one. It asks the viewer: Are you growing, or are you just getting older? And it refuses to answer the question for you.
Key Takeaways for SEO:
Larry Rivers’s 1981 painting Growing is a compact but revealing work that encapsulates many of the artist’s late-career interests: the compression of autobiography and art history, the interplay of figuration and abstraction, and a wry engagement with American popular culture. Below is a focused, structured essay that situates the painting historically, analyzes its form and content, and assesses its significance within Rivers’s oeuvre and late 20th‑century American art.