Larry Rivers

the long version

"Artist Larry Rivers has shocked, scandalized, and intrigued audiences for close to fifty years. Rivers emerged as a pop art pioneer in the 1950s and later became one of America's most important figurative painters. Ever the iconoclast, Rivers is a multimedia artist, working in painting, sculpture, collage, and installation pieces. His eclectic style draws from a surprising range of sources - from historic events like Washington crossing the Delaware, the Russian Revolution, and the Holocaust to Hollywood movies. He courted controversy, as in his shrewd satire of Manet's luscious nude Olympia, painted in blackface. Rivers worked abroad, linking the art worlds of Paris and New York; he became notorious not only for his work, but for his provocative lifestyle. He moves fluidly outside the traditional art world, accomplished as a jazz musician, writer, and filmmaker. At age seventy-eight Rivers has never had a complete retrospective of his work. Now the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., brings his legacy to light in this definitive Rivers monograph."--BOOK JACKET.