in the mood
by Douglas Messerli
And I said "Hey, baby, it's a quarter to three
There's a mess of moonlight, won't-cha share it with me"
"Well" he answered "Baby, don't-cha know that it's rude
To keep my two lips waitin' when they're in the mood"
Larry Rivers, with Arnold Weinstein What Did I Do?: The Unauthorized
Autobiography (New York: HarperCollins, 1992)
As I mentioned in My Year 2003, in February 1996 I visited Arnold Weinstein in New York City to discuss the Sun & Moon publication of his play, Red Eye of Love. At that time Arnold presented me with a copy, evidently on Valentine's weekend (for he drew a big heart upon the title page, dedicating it to "Doug, N. Y. Poet in L.A."), of Larry Rivers' What Did I Do?, a book which, as Larry read from his handwritten copies, his close friend Arnold had typed into the computer, querying Rivers throughout those several months in 1991 about comprehensibility and style.
As I mentioned in My Year 2003, in February 1996 I visited Arnold Weinstein in New York City to discuss the Sun & Moon publication of his play, Red Eye of Love. At that time Arnold presented me with a copy, evidently on Valentine's weekend (for he drew a big heart upon the title page, dedicating it to "Doug, N. Y. Poet in L.A."), of Larry Rivers' What Did I Do?, a book which, as Larry read from his handwritten copies, his close friend Arnold had typed into the computer, querying Rivers throughout those several months in 1991 about comprehensibility and style.
For years after Arnold had presented this
book to me, it sat unread on my bookshelf until this year (2009), as I
determined to write on Larry Rivers, who died on August 14, 2002. It was time,
I decided, to take the opportunity to get to know this artist better.
I met Rivers only twice: while he was
reinstalling his History of the Russian
Revolution: From Marx to Mayakovsky in the Hirshhorn Museum galleries in the 1970s, an occasion I doubt he
would have remembered, and at Arnold's 1996 party. But Rivers apparently knew
nearly everyone in the New York art scene, and, accordingly, we had many shared
acquaintances outside of Arnold Weinstein; I felt, somehow, as if I'd known him
for years.
There
is, of course, a great deal of macho-performance in Rivers's recounting of
these acts, and sometimes it appears almost as if he were listing his heartthrobs,
male and female (painter Jane Freilicher, poet/curator Frank O'Hara, poet Jean
Garrigue [who, after becoming pregnant, had an abortion performed upon her by
another, better known poet, Dr. William Carlos Williams], and numerous other
women—including his own sister and his mother-in-law, Berdie), to impress
himself and readers that he lived a fascinating life. Yet, the sensitive reader
often cringes at just these passages, for deep down, we perceive, that Rivers
is not only terribly unsure of himself, but, as many of his artists friends
recognize, dramatizes with blustering braggadocio to make himself loveable in
their eyes. His cock-sucking episodes with his dealer John Bernard Myers, can
be seen a kind of desperation in the younger artist to get ahead, to "put
himself on the art map." And, although even the artist makes certain we
comprehend that many of his insecurities stem from his youthful awkwardness (a thin
boy with a long nose, a nearly green tinge about his skin) and his Jewish
immigrant upbringing, we also know that there is just enough truth to his
bad-boy Rimbaud behavior to truly make Rivers an adventurous rouge.
On the good ole boy side of his
personality, we also recognize his love and support of his children, his
affection for his wives and friends, particularly Clarice, fellow jazz
performer-artist Howard Kanovitz, Weinstein, and, in particular, O'Hara.
Although Rivers makes it quite clear that he is heterosexual, we might well
agree with W. H. Auden that there are no homosexuals, just homosexual acts,
given the immediate attraction between O'Hara and Rivers. Upon their very first
meeting the two find themselves at evening's end in an intense kissing session.
And throughout their friendship, and despite Rivers's attempts to cut off his
services, it is clear that he "sucked Frank's cock" fairly often. One
of the major admissions of his failures was Rivers's inability to stand up to
Clarice regarding her dislike for Frank's
current boyfriend J. J., which
meant that Frank was not invited every weekend, as he might have liked, to
their Southampton house. Indeed, the one fatal weekend when O'Hara was killed
by a beach buggy on Water Island occurred after Rivers had made up an excuse to
keep him and J. J. away. The scene Rivers remembers after his moving account of
O'Hara's death and funeral serves as cold comfort:
I'm reminded of an event that combines the absurd with the
incomprehensible. About three weeks before
Frank was killed
on Water Island, he was visiting me out in Southampton. It was
early July. I was married to Clarice and reasonably busy with
marriage and her. Gwynne was almost two, and another child
was due the first
week in August (we named her Emma Fran-
cesca). Frank, alone with me in the house, poked his head into
the dark,
and said, "In the mood for a
little blow job?"—which
hadn't happened for years.I pondered the question.
What was I pondering?
"Why not?" I said.
When Frank died I found
myself absurdly comforted by my
decision to comply. Why? So he could take
one less disappoint-
ment to the grave. ...What difference would any of
these
things have made to the disappearance of a soul?
Rivers' unstable behavior may be at the
center of this book, but his autobiography is also filled with hundreds of
gossipy tidbits about the art, music, and literary worlds—enough to sustain
anyone for years to come (i.e. who was married to whom and who didn't and did
grow up with fabulous wealth).
But more importantly, What Did I Do? speaks volumes about Rivers' own art and makes clear
that this so-called "pop artist" was serious in all the art
historical references. He truly loved Ingres, Bonnard, Monet, David and
hundreds of other artists, dead and alive, nearly as much as he loved life and
his hundreds of friends. Rivers wasn't merely "pop," for he was
mothered by a long tradition of visual artists who, despite his everyday
failures in life, gave sustenance, putting him "in the mood," so to
speak, to create his powerful figurative canvases and sculptures.
Finally, I realize just how nice it has
been to know Larry Rivers for all these years, even if the friendship has only
been one of the head.
Los Angeles, February 12, 2009
Reprinted from Green Integer Blog (February 2009).
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