Perhaps Growing was a student film, a single 16mm reel shown once at the Collective for Living Cinema on White Street, then lost. Perhaps Rivers himself suppressed it—he was vain but also fiercely honest, and seeing himself on film may have revealed too much. Or perhaps the title is a misremembered fragment: a composite of Rivers’s actual film The Central Park Sheiks (1983) and a lost documentary called Larry Rivers: A Late Style that aired once on WNET.
Research and verification steps (recommended) Documentary Growing 1981 Larry Rivers Download
Documentary approach and themes
Rivers worked in series— The History of Matzoh , The Boston Massacre , Dutch Masters . In 1981, he was obsessed with scale and speed. He painted with one hand while smoking with the other, jazz on the radio, charcoal dust floating like ash. A documentary would catch him revising a canvas for the hundredth time, muttering, "It’s still not vulgar enough." Growth for Rivers was not refinement but accumulation—layering, erasing, overpainting until the image breathed with a kind of elegant ugliness. Perhaps Growing was a student film, a single
The film is a raw, experimental documentary that blurs the lines between life and art. The Subject A documentary would catch him revising a canvas
: Rivers’ younger daughter, Emma Tamburlini, fiercely objected to the inclusion of the tapes. She publicly condemned the footage as child pornography and stated that the non-consensual filming severely damaged her mental health and contributed to teenage anorexia.
Summary