Larry Rivers "(RE)APPROPRIATIONS at TIBOR DE NAGY GALLERY

James Kalm is back in the Rough Cuts saddle for the beginning of the 2017-18 art gallery season, and for the thirteenth year of the Kalm Report. In the early 1980’s, during the rise of the East Village art scene, your reporter was briefly employed by Larry Rivers (1923-2002) to help restore a painting/sculpture that had been sold through a divorce settlement. As a fan who’d been aware of Rivers work since beginning to paint himself, it was a rare privilege to meet and work for Rivers, and get an inside view of his practice and personality. Rivers remains one of the most charismatic, prolific, and complex painters of the Beat Era. Starting his creative career as a Jazz musician, he would go on to make a name in the visual arts for his reaction to Abstract Expressionism and as a precursor to Neo-Dada and Pop Art. His return to figuration and particularly his exceptional draftsmanship, and eye for subversive subject matter that would challenge viewers, made him a seminal force in the New York School of painting. This exhibition features works from over forty years of the artist’s career, and presents examples of many of the innovative and experimental methods and approaches to painting that made Rivers so admired and controversial. This program was recorded September 6, 2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_R...