Peter Clothier

Larry Rivers lavishes his prodigious talent as a draftsman on a genial new series of works that once again play the line between painting, assemblage, construction, and illustration. Rivers' wit shines as he draws generously on art historical references and on favorite popular conventions, this time corralling images from fashion design and the bird studies of James Audubon, to create a cornucopia of works that range in scale from the intimate to the monumental.

Rivers brings his whole arsenal of well-tested technical approaches to these subjects. In some, like "Bending Forward Blue," the deceptively simple study of a woman bending forward, he blends the spontaneity of sketch with the studied artifice of trompe l'oeil, replicating torn and stapled pages from a sketchpad in large scale on a canvas; life-sized, his subject manages to look trapped inside the space he has allowed her. In others, like "Life Size: Black Necked Stilt," he returns to the use of elements of sculpted foamboard to interrupt the flat surface, making mischief with the modernist aversion to illusion; and in others still, like the stunning "Life Size: Great Blue Heron," he is satisfied with the vital effect of simple oil on canvas.

There's a not-so-subtle irony throughout this series that plays on the theme of vanity. The metaphorical link between plumage and apparel is underscored by Rivers' exuberant exploitation of the techniques of illustration, which is after all another form of display. In many of these pictures, the preening model is surrounded by a gaudy show of birds or fish, endowed by nature with the kind of glamorous display that we humans struggle to achieve through artifice.

-----Peter Clothier is a Los Angeles based art critic and has written numerous  articles, art reviews, art catalogues, book reviews, and essays.