On Seeing Larry Rivers' Washington Crossing the Delaware At the Museum of Modern Art

On Seeing Larry Rivers’ Washington Crossing the Delaware At the Museum of Modern Art

Larry Rivers - Washington Crossing the Delaware

Now that our hero has come back to usin his white pants and we know his nosetrembling like a flag under fire,we see the calm cold river is supportingour forces, the beautiful history.

To be more revolutionary than a nunis our desire, to be secular and intimateas, when sighting a redcoat, you smileand pull the trigger. Anxietiesand animosities, flaming and feeding

on theoretical considerations andthe jealous spiritualities of the abstract,the robot? they’re smoke, billows abovethe physical event. They have burned up.See how free we are! as a nation of persons.

Dear father of our country, so aliveyou must have lied incessantly to beimmediate, here are your bones crossedon my breast like a rusty flintlock,a pirate’s flag, bravely specific

and ever so light in the misty glareof a crossing by water in winter to a shoreother than that the bridge reaches for.Don’t shoot until, the white of freedom glintingon your gun barrel, you see the general fear.

Leutze- Washington Crossing the Delaware

Larry Rivers´ painting deals rather irreverently with the 1851 painting by Emanuel Leutze Washington Crossing the Delaware, one of those icons of American civilization that glorify George Washington as leader of his nation.