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Portraits Shockingly Intimate a Half-Century Ago Now Assume a Softer Patina  

Rivers played fruitfully in the gap between high and low. See, for example, "Dutch Masters and Cigars III" (1963), the large-scale painting and collage representing a cigar box decorated with reproductions of Rembrandt's "Syndics of the Drapers' Guild." The insouciant conflation of art and commerce, executed by Rivers with a carelessly skillful touch, speaks volumes about the collapse of hierarchies already happening in American culture and society. . . .

A Camel cigarette package rendered in deep, rich shades of red on a square canvas (from 1962) becomes a hybrid Pop-Modernist icon.

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