While looking at these art works from the late 1950’s I had a moment of insight in which I understood once again how completely the corporate world has come to dominant all aspects of the American experience. We know, or we should know, that corporate America dominates our political life, our government, our for-profit healthcare “industry”, our work place, and our educational system, especially our institutions of “higher” learning.
While we might think that the arts flourish or whither in a universe separate from this corporate mandate, the evidence is to the contrary. Publishing has always been a business in this country: a work under consideration for publication is rarely assayed as to its intellectual value but more likely in regard to its projected commercial success, more so now than in the past with the present subsumation of publishers into corporate conglomerates. Corporations underwrite university presses. From its inception, the movie industry has been controlled by the money men “in New York”. Theatre in America has hardly ever been more than live entertainment for those with corporate expense accounts. The skylines of our cities are defined by bland corporate towers. Our public institutions, museums and libraries, are chaired by boards of directors composed of men and women from the corporate world.
The corporate presence is no less evident in the world of the fine arts. In the museum world we have progressed in the twentieth century from look-alike beaux arts classic revival mausoleums to bland look-alike modern architecture museum extensions. New museums adhere to the prevailing norm. Inside, the museums host collections that are composed, in the contemporary galleries, of the same small number of artists who have “national” stature as determined by New York City critics, showing, almost without exception, works that are the same from one museum to the next, and with only the slightest acknowledgement of the local artists. Thus one begins to see Rothko, Stuart Davis, Jackson Pollock, et al, as one man factories turning out product for these sepulchral institutions.
For many years I knew and worked with Larry Rivers’ two sons. I knew from their conversation that Larry lived and worked in the midst of the art scene out “in the Hamptons”. Early in his career he had been a habitué of the downtown (Greenwich Village, for your out of towners), art scene and likely spent many an afternoon and evening at the Cedars Tavern talking jazz, art, and picking up “chicks”, as years later many of the then older chicks subsequently told me. Thus I have always known that Larry Rivers was an art world insider. On one occasion Joe, his son, told me that there were many really good artists at work in the world but that they were not active in the “art scene” and so they got no press and were for the most part unknown. Despite the popular myth that the artist is a social outsider and that his unique vision extends the human experience, it should rather be understood that in America the artist is but another facet of the corporate superstructure, a drone who receives support correlative to his willingness to legitimize corporate hegemony.
Larry Rivers has always exemplified for me the dilemma of the good draughtsman, the artist, in the modern era where abstraction rules the roost and who is in constant search for a manner in which to use his talents, and his preference, for the representational drawing of the recognizable object.
The works in this exhibition are early works painted in a variety of styles all of them with an abundance of drawing. In quality they are not at all different from, but no where near as good as, an exhibition of student art works I saw a year ago in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, that is to say they look very much like student work and none of the artists here or there shows any evidence of having developed a personal vision. But what is most disturbing is that in his work there is a real sense that Larry Rivers wanted to be “a player” …there are consistent references to the works of Picasso, Matisse, de Kooning, and Hans Hoffman among the many famous others. My sense is that he was presenting his credentials for inclusion into The Tradition in Western Art, that he was demonstrably eager to be a fellow player in the current art scene: whatever it took he was ready to appease the corporate purse.
Clearly the man loved to paint and draw. Now there are many really fine art works in the world in which the artist, having mastered his medium, executed works that have nothing more to say than: “I did it because I can do it well and I love doing it!” But unlike outsider art in which a master of his craft expresses something irrepressible that must be said, Larry Rivers has nothing to express beyond his love of art, he really has nothing to say, at least not here. Nor, in these early works, is he the master of his craft. This is not Picasso making marks on a surface with absolute confidence and an indifference to the observer’s response: these markings are all labored and rather tentative and appear as if executed with an awareness of an audience: they are a public performance.
Of all the works on view here only Orange Valentine Number Two has validity as an art work: it is a fully resolved visual experience, it has presence, it has integrity, it has a life of its own. I have always liked the idea of Larry Rivers’ work and I have often suspected that he is far better than the prevailing wisdom indicates. In the Steinberg collection, seen two years ago at the Metropolitan Museum, his painting of his mother in law was, I thought, one of the best works. I have admired many of his lithographs back in the 80’s. But I am also aware that often his work is merely pedestrian.
The New York Times gave this exhibition a very good review, suggesting that Rivers might yet someday enjoy a more elevated reputation. I hope someday that does happen. But I also recognize that the New York Times almost always gives gallery and museum exhibitions favorable reviews. In fact, you might say that The New York Times is one of the great enablers of the corporate stranglehold on the world of the fine arts. This is so consistently true that I would suggest that their opinions no longer have validity.
As for these early works, average student works that they are, nothing is gained for the reputation of the artist by their presentation to the public. A more confident and self disciplined artist would have hidden them or destroyed them years ago: a gallery with the artist’s best interests at heart would have advised against showing them, at least until the time when a full career retrospective was mounted. If it is believed that Rivers is best served by small exhibitions like this one, perhaps it would be a better idea if they were small career retrospectives: unless you know his best work his less than best is neither interesting nor inspiring.
http://www.tibordenagy.com/#/exhibitions/
Other Larry Rivers works can be seen at this web site:
http://www.larryriversfoundation.org/
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