Growing 1981 Larry Rivers May 2026

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.

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. growing 1981 larry rivers

Growing (1981) is not merely a painting; it is a manifesto rendered in charcoal and oil. At first glance, it appears to be a simple anatomical study of a plant. But as the eye adjusts, the viewer realizes that Rivers has done something subversive: he has turned the natural world into a psychological mirror. To understand Growing , one must remember the state of the art world in 1981. Neo-Expressionism was beginning to boil over in Germany and Italy (Baselitz, Kiefer, Chia), while in New York, the graffiti-inspired work of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring was crashing the gallery scene. Minimalism had run its course. A plant "growing" is usually a sign of health

Larry Rivers, then 58 years old, had already lived several artistic lives. He had survived the shadow of Abstract Expressionism (having been a protégé of Willem de Kooning) and had shocked the world in the 1950s with Washington Crossing the Delaware , a monumental history painting that broke every rule of history painting. The title is ironic

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.