Growing 1981 Larry Rivers [exclusive] -

No Rivers review is complete without noting his occasional slickness. At times, Growing seems too comfortable, too knowing. The “messy” passages can feel calculated, unlike the raw struggle of de Kooning’s Excavation or the deadpan mystery of Rivers’ own earlier Washington Crossing the Delaware . Some critics might argue that the plant-as-metaphor is too easy, a bit of midcentury poetic thinking that by 1981 had grown tired.