In the vast ocean of art history documentaries, there are towering titans (like Civilisation ) and then there are hidden gems—films that capture a specific chemical reaction of time, place, and personality. The 1981 documentary Growing falls squarely into the latter category. For decades, this intimate portrait of the legendary, provocative pop artist Larry Rivers has existed in a gray zone of copyright purgatory and physical media decay.
Conclusion Documentary Growing exemplifies Larry Rivers’s impulse to hybridize media and to probe the construction of selfhood through art. Its formal complexity and thematic richness reward repeated viewings and critical engagement. Viewed anew, it speaks to contemporary concerns about narrative authority, the materiality of memory, and the continual remaking of an artist’s image—making it a valuable artifact for both art historians and general viewers curious about how film can perform biography rather than merely report it. documentary growing 1981 larry rivers download updated
: In 2010, New York University (NYU) returned the Growing tapes to the Larry Rivers Foundation after realizing the daughters had not consented to their public release. The university requested the foundation remove "problematic material" from the larger Larry Rivers archive. In the vast ocean of art history documentaries,