The year 1981 saw Jean-Michel Basquiat’s first public show, Julian Schnabel’s plate paintings, the rise of Neo-Expressionism. Rivers, the original pop artist before Pop Art had a name, was being pushed aside. A documentary made then would be a eulogy dressed as a biography. "Growing" would be ironic: the art world was growing faster, louder, richer, and Rivers was growing irrelevant. But the film would show him refusing irrelevance—working harder, cruder, more personally.
This is a fascinating, if disjointed, piece of underground cinema history.
The background of this unreleased documentary reveals how it blurred the lines between experimental art, family dysfunction, and criminal exploitation. What is the "Growing" (1981) Documentary?
The short answer is that for this film.
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The film tracks how Rivers transitioned from standard canvas paintings to three-dimensional relief sculptures and multimedia installations.
This is a deceptive query. There is no widely known documentary titled "Growing" from 1981 by or about (the pioneering pop realist painter, sculptor, and jazz saxophonist). However, your request touches on a fascinating and profound nexus: artistic process, the early 1980s New York avant-garde, and the tension between documentation and disappearance.
The keyword distinguishes this artifact from countless other films with the same verb in their title. This specific documentary, directed by John Schott (with heavy collaboration from Rivers himself), was a landmark of metafictional biography. The year 1981 saw Jean-Michel Basquiat’s first public
Between 1976 and 1981, Rivers used a video camera to chronicle his two adolescent daughters, Emma and Gwynne.
: Emma Tamburlini has publicly condemned the film, describing it as "nothing less than child pornography". She has stated that the filming process was uncomfortable, coerced, and contributed to lifelong psychological struggles, including anorexia.
: One of the subjects, Emma Rivers Tamburlini, has publicly described the film as "nothing less than child pornography" and an act of abuse. Availability and Legal Status You cannot legally download or view . Its distribution is restricted for the following reasons: Permanent Restriction "Growing" would be ironic: the art world was