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 series documented their physical development and transition through puberty into young adulthood. growing 1981 larry rivers
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 project remains largely unexhibited due to its
If you ever stand before this painting, do not look for hope. Look for honesty. Rivers offers no antidote to death, only a magnificent, sprawling, messy acknowledgment of the process. In 1981, Larry Rivers was growing. He was growing older, wiser, and more ruthless in his vision. And he left that growth on the canvas for us to witness—a beautiful, rotting garden of American art. Rivers anticipated the postmodern mashup — mixing high
But the "growing" is not passive.
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.