Three months ago, Jim Alterman posted a video on Instagram from his gallery, Jim’s of Lambertville in New Jersey, just across the river from New Hope, Pennsylvania, in which he “smashed” a work by Larry Rivers—once hailed as the “Godfather of Pop Art”—over his adult son’s head. “It was a student artwork,” Alterman clarified, part of Rivers’s estate and foundation holdings. “I wouldn’t smash a real Larry Rivers painting, but it looked good on social media.”
Rivers, who died in 2002, also loved to shock. His 1970 installation Caucasian Woman Sprawled on a Bed and Eight Figures of Hanged Men on Four Rectangular Boxes depicted a lynching; another, America’s No. 1 Problem (1967–69), displayed a Black and a white penis alongside a ruler. Offstage, he carried the same irreverence—serving cat food at a party and decorating a Christmas tree with tampons. He liked to cut the tops off his shoes to expose his toes.
