Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Rivers's exuberantly hip, sexually freewheeling autobiography displays his relentless, almost exhibitionistic candor, as some of his paintings do. Born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg in 1923, he was raised in the Bronx by a hypercritical mother and a father reportedly guilty of bizarre sexual improprieties with children. A bebop jazz saxophonist with a heroin habit, Rivers abandoned his first wife and their sons in 1947. He later married his Welsh housekeeper, a ``deliciously unique female''; they separated in 1968. Written with playwright-director Weinstein, this gossipy collage dissects the incestuous social world of a New York avant-garde that included John Ashbery, Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Koch, Andy Warhol, LeRoi Jones and Delmore Schwartz. Rivers is most emotive when discussing his ``romantic fling'' with poet Frank O'Hara. Somewhere inside this messy self-portrait is the intriguing story of how Rivers found his path as a brash, innovative artist. Illustrated. 25,000 first printing; author tour. (Nov.)
What Did I Do?: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Larry Rivers
by Larry Rivers, Arnold WeinsteinIf modern art is the twentieth century's biography, then this autobiography of one of its pivotal figures is a unique record of our times. Larry Rivers' dazzlingly intelligent testimony takes us through the more than four decades of New York's postwar cultural explosion, telling what it was like for the artists and jazz musicians and poets and playwrights. And his… See more details below
Overview
If modern art is the twentieth century's biography, then this autobiography of one of its pivotal figures is a unique record of our times. Larry Rivers' dazzlingly intelligent testimony takes us through the more than four decades of New York's postwar cultural explosion, telling what it was like for the artists and jazz musicians and poets and playwrights. And his honest exploration of the place of the erotic in his life and work - with all the accompanying excesses, costs, and entanglements - gives his stunning account of the journey a particular power. His talent and imagination enabled Rivers early on to discover and pursue multiple vocations, and to create a liberated self while maintaining an attachment, in his seemingly anarchic work, to the claims of tradition. Rivers started in his Bronx adolescence with a name change and a career (still in progress) as a jazz saxophonist and composer. Painting and sculpture came later, and soon there were one-man exhibitions and a stream of works, many of them now in the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Corcoran, the National Gallery, the Guggenheim, museums abroad, and private collections. A great figurative painter, Rivers is also acclaimed as a precursor of pop art; an artist with an unashamed interest in sexuality and the private moment, he is also celebrated for bringing history back into contemporary painting - from his own famous version of Washington Crossing the Delaware to the pictorial story of the Jews in The History of Matzoh and the somber set of large portraits of Primo Levi. Aside from his major work as a painter, Rivers has written poetry, acted in plays and films, designed sets, illustrated books, and collaborated with writer friends. Along the way there have been marriages and children, affairs and addictions, comic and farcical happenings, sadness and tragedy - all unfolded in a full, richly creative narrative. Candid, thoughtful, and funny, this amazing book is surely
Editorial Reviews
Donna Seaman
Painter Larry Rivers describes himself as "ballsy" and that's an understatement. His conversational autobiography, whipped into shape by longtime friend and playwright Weinstein, is audacious, frenetic, explicit, hilarious, and touchingly generous in its self-exposure. Bronx born, Larry Rivers, originally Irving Grossman, found the arts via the moan of a baritone saxophone. A bebopper, Rivers doped and gigged and drove his first wife crazy with neglect. Jazz led to painting while all avenues led to sex. As Rivers irreverently recounts the gossip and goings-on of the postwar New York art scene, dropping names like Helen Frankenthaler, Andy Warhol, William De Kooning, Clement Greenberg, John Ashberry, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Cage, he simultaneously maintains a Henry Miller-like litany of sexual escapades from boyish onanism to homosexual encounters to a lifelong obsession with voluptuous women in their 20s. Coyly and pointedly addressing his reader as "dear voyeur," Rivers confesses to insecurities and fears, loves lost, suicidal moments, and drug addiction. He also illuminates his complex relationship with poet Frank O'Hara, the details of his second marriage, and his love for his children. His blatancy modulates into reflectiveness as he confronts his past, rekindles old affections, and remembers seminal inspirations. An artist's autobiography like no other, this is a pyrotechnic performance--initially explosive then dazzling, arcing, finally and gracefully, back to earth. This may well be the most talked about art book of the year.Product Details
- ISBN-13:
- 9780060190071
- Publisher:
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication date:
- 10/01/1992
- Edition description:
- First Edition
- Pages:
- 498
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