Frank O'Hara on the painter Larry Rivers

I have known Larry Rivers since 1950.... It was at a cocktail party we met, as one always meets people in New York, and waving at the crowd he said, "After all it's life we're interested in, not art." A couple of weeks later when I visited his studio for the first time...he said with no air of contradiction or remembrance, "After all, it's art we're interested in, not life." His main interest was obviously in the immediate situation.