Larry Rivers was born in New York in 1923. He graduated from New Tork University and stud¬ied painting with Hans Hofmann. His first solo exhibition was held in New Tork in 1949, and since that time he has exhibited in virtually all the major art museums in this country and abroad. He is the author of Drawings and Digressions, published in 1979, and is currently represented by the Marlborough Gallery in New Tork, where he will be exhibiting in October. He is also a professional jazz saxophonist. He lives in New Tork and on Long Island.

“Does New York lead now and will it continue to lead?” In other words, do artists—I guess, younger artists—look to New York to be a place that would have some effect upon their work, their careers? Well, yes. I guess New York is a leader for the poor and the blind and the provincial. But maybe that’s not taking the question seriously. It depends on what age you are, what generation you belong to. It’s hard to know whether my thoughts about the art world would have to do with getting older, too. Elaine de Kooning said to me, about twenty-five years ago, that if anybody was doing anything—meaning anything important in art—we, our group, would know it. Today you couldn’t possibly talk that way—unless you were an art sociologist! It’s all gotten so much bigger. It’s just mushroomed. Fifty-seventh Street is still there, but when you think of SoHo—it’s one square mile