A notebook belonging to artist Larry Rivers illustrates an essay by Nicholas Martin about Rivers’ 1961 painting “Parts of the Face: French Vocabulary Lesson.”
Rivers responded to the prospect of making paintings for a living by skipping town to Paris in 1950 for ‘a half year of deliberating whether I should continue a life devoted to making art or write poetry’.
Although he never gained notoriety as a poet, Rivers’s devotion to the craft is obvious; the Larry Rivers Papers at New York University’s Fales Library hold sheaves of poems and stories composed throughout the artist’s life,10 and Rivers held an enduring preference for writers as companions and partners in collaboration. It is therefore no surprise to see Rivers, upon his return to Paris in 1961, engaging with language on the canvas in Parts of the Face. A notebook Rivers kept during his 1961 stay reflects this interplay: the first page includes French language notations and a sketch of a woman’s face
Image credit: Larry Rivers Notebook page with French language lessons and sketch, 1961, Larry Rivers Papers, Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University
Read more: ‘An Action Painter Manqué’ – In Focus | Tate