Larry Rivers and Frank O'Hara

What are the relationships between the male body and male sexualities? How can one's identity be affirmatively categorized in accordance with certain gender distinctions and sexual orientations? By drawing upon the close analysis of Larry Rivers' nude portraits, his autobiography along with the writings of Frank O'Hara, who was a poet and close affiliate of the artist, this book explores the issues of the self, body, and sexual identities, particularly male sexualities in art, literature, and cultures of the 1950s. Most of the extant discussions of Rivers' art locate the painter in a transitional position between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. This book presents an alternative proposition by concentrating on Rivers' involvement with young homosexual poets in the New York School, including O'Hara during the 1950s and early 1960s. The particular emphasis is placed upon how Rivers' and O'Hara's depictions of the male nude and male intimacy in the 1950s prefigured the revolutionary concept of identity and "normal" male sexualities far before the advent of queer studies in the 1990s.