Scrolling Through the Past : Larry Rivers turns back the clock to tell how his ‘History of Matzah’ led the artist to his heritage.

“If I could only paint like that again,” cracks Larry Rivers, entering a Skirball Cultural Center gallery dominated by three massive canvases. The work in question is his “History of Matzah: The Story of the Jews,” a triptych that had been rolled up in a warehouse until mid-January--exhibited only four times since it was completed in 1984.

The densely packed paintings, depicting Judaic life from Moses to the 1920s, form the centerpiece of the Skirball series “Journey to a Promised Land: America,” running through May 30. The first focuses on biblical times, the second on the European experience and the last on Jewish immigration to the U.S.

Milken Community High School students, across the freeway from the Skirball, will create a fourth canvas interpreting the American Jewish experience from their vantage point.

“This is a coup,” says Nancy Berman, director of the Skirball, who had been wooing the paintings’ owners, Sivia and Jeffrey Loria, for years. “Our permanent exhibit deals with Jewish life from antiquity to America, and this work is an introduction to--or a summary of--it by a great painter of the 20th century.”

“Matzah” is a detour for the artist. But it reflects much that’s familiar about Rivers. It contains the figurative drawing that set him apart from his Abstract Expressionist peers and the mass imagery that established him as a forerunner of Pop art. There’s also the reliance on historical references that permeates the artist’s work and the narrative style employed in “History of the Russian Revolution” (1965), hanging in Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum.

It was this last picture that inspired the Lorias, New York art dealers and old friends of the artist, to commission “Matzah,” whose title refers to the Jewish unleavened bread that’s a metaphor for freedom and the backdrop of the piece. If he could do so much with Russia’s past, they suggested, how much more could he bring to his own? Tackling this project, they hoped, would reconnect him with his roots.

The 73-year-old artist has traveled a distance since his childhood in the Bronx. Born Yitzroch Loiza “Irving” Grossberg, he spoke Yiddish until he was 4. Both of his parents were Russian immigrants. His mother came over on a boat with “a bunch of relatives,” he says. His father played the “Jewish violin” and earned his living as a plumber.

Though the artist never denied his heritage, he moved in different circles. Early on, he took up jazz saxophone and began to perform professionally. According to his 1992 “unauthorized autobiography,” as he calls it, he drank to excess, mainlined heroin, married twice and carried on with a host of younger women--and occasionally men. His eclectic coterie of friends and acquaintances ranged from poets Allen Ginsberg and Frank O’Hara to author Jack Kerouac.

“As a jazz saxophonist, I identified more with blacks than Jews,” recalls Rivers, his deep voice filling the gallery. “I didn’t care much about my ethnicity because it had nothing to do with my music or art at the time. At 13, I changed my name to Larry, and at 18 I was handed Rivers. I was playing in a Massachusetts nightclub one night and a comedian introduced my band as ‘Larry Rivers and the Mudcats.’ ”

Still in the throes of bohemia, Rivers is sporting a pink-and-purple tie-dyed T-shirt, a beaten-up leather shoulder pouch and a gold stud in his right ear. Completing the “Easy Rider” look, he emits a hawkish intensity reminiscent of Dennis Hopper. He’s accompanied by a 31-year-old Austrian computer graphics designer, Heidi Christian, whom he describes as a longtime friend and sometimes lover. A hearing aid and an admittedly faltering memory are the only testaments to age.

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Switching his focus from music to art in the late 1940s, Rivers soon built a reputation as a talented draftsman. His work is included in the collections of all major New York museums as well as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art. The artist is also known for weaving his life into his work. He depicted his ancestors in “Europe II” (1956) and rituals in “The Burial” (1951), “Bar Mitzvah Photograph Painting” (1961) and “Wedding Photo Drawing--1938.” “Matzah,” however, is his first comprehensive use of Jewish subject matter--his take on 3,000 years of history.

To get a firm footing, the artist consulted Joel Carmichael, a Marxist scholar at Columbia University, who came up with 10 key points to hit. Rivers also perused histories of the Jews, as well as hordes of photographs and illustrations--a visual casting call, so to speak. Four years were spent researching and executing the paintings that increased in number from one to three.

“We got a call from Larry saying that the first canvas was almost covered, and he was still in the middle of biblical times,” recalls Sivia Loria.

“And when an artist is in the middle of a masterpiece, you don’t say, ‘Stop!’ ” adds her husband, Jeffrey.

The couple kept tabs on the evolution of the paintings in Southhampton (Long Island) where they and Rivers each have homes. Following the lead of his pal, the late Willem de Kooning, Rivers dug a trench in his studio so the canvas could be lowered and painted at eye level. Hundreds of figures had to be drawn, and the artist barely made the deadline for a September 1984 exhibition at New York’s Jewish Museum. At the time of installation, the Lorias say, the third canvas was still wet.

Though the Lorias paid more than $100,000 for each panel, they defrayed the cost by selling some of the 50 or so preparatory drawings for $12,000 to $15,000 apiece. Of the proceeds, they kept half, Rivers got half. Many now hang in museums and private collections, but 15 are on display at the Skirball.

The artist knew he was walking a tightrope because objectivity was impossible. “I didn’t want to call the painting ‘History of the Jews,’ since history relies on provable facts,” Rivers says. “I choose to call it ‘The History of Matzah: The Story of the Jews,’ since the narrative is open to interpretation. What made it onto the canvas was also a matter of space.”

Rivers’ interpretation doesn’t sit well with Skirball President Uri Herscher, who finds “Matzah” excessively negative. Were it not a springboard for discussion, he maintains, he wouldn’t have accepted the work for exhibition at the museum.

“The three panels are immensely attractive and provocative,” he acknowledges, “but reflect selective memory. What’s highlighted is conflict between Jews and non-Jews--martyrs and victims. I would like to have seen Joseph forgiving his brothers, righteous Gentiles who saved Jews in the Holocaust, even a fourth panel showing Jonas Salk, Isaac Stern, Benjamin Cardozo, who prospered in America. There’s a wonderful line in Jeremiah: ‘We are a people imprisoned by hope.’ ”

Rivers takes exception to the criticism, which he claims is misdirected. “There is a certain victim potential in the history of the Jews,” he concedes. “But I also showed the Educational Alliance, the role unions played in women’s rights--in addition to the Jewish prostitutes. Look closely and you’ll see [violinist] Yehudi Menuhin, [the Yiddish theater’s] Jacob Adler, [U.S. Congressman] Meyer London, of whom I’m very proud. [Herscher and I] just have different heroes.”

Though the Lorias hoped he would depict the Holocaust, Rivers rejected the idea. Translating such horrors into 6- or 9-inch-tall images, he said, would trivialize them. And because the subject had never been a focus of his, he was uneasy about taking credit where none was due. “People think more of Spielberg because of ‘Schindler’s List,’ don’t they?” he asks.

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Delving into the past, however, was nothing new for the man who painted “Washington Crossing the Delaware” in 1953 and “The Last Confederate Soldier” in 1961. Looking back has always interested him more than “moonwalks,” he confesses. “Rivers is a very smart person who knows history--especially art history--and he incorporated that into his work,” says Barbara Gilbert, a curator of the Skirball exhibition.

Still, the irreverent Rivers couldn’t resist playing a bit. Michelangelo’s “David” is circumcised and given Rivers’ more Semitic features. His cousin Aaron Hochberg is the model for both Moses and Jesus (who sits surrounded by disciples in “The Last Seder”--a takeoff on Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper”). And, in a nod to artists who memorialized their patrons, Rivers inserted images of the Lorias into a Polish synagogue scene.

Critical reaction to the paintings was mixed. While Gerrit Henry praised them in Art in America for their “wit” and “wisdom,” the New York Times’ Grace Glueck called them “blown-up endpapers for the illustrated books of Jewish history one reads in religious school.” Rivers is understated when appraising the work. Though the drawing is “pretty good,” he says, the first two panels are “tighter” than they would be had he painted them today.

“The piece reminds me of those WPA murals I’d see at the post office as a kid,” he says. “I was worried it would be perceived as corny or schmaltzy, which, in fact, is part of who I am. I was also concerned about being labeled a ‘Jewish artist.’ At that time, of course, I was Mr. Avant-Garde--a term which is meaningless today. The only one I know who’s still considered avant-garde is John Cage. And since he created music you can’t listen to, that’s a dubious distinction.”

“Matzah,” as the Lorias hoped, gave Rivers a heightened sense of his history. (“Like blacks, the Jews had to deal with totally irrational behavior that affected their lives,” he observes.) He became fascinated by photographs of Auschwitz and, in 1990, painted his first major Holocaust piece, “Four Seasons: Fall in the Forest at Birkenau,” now in Washington, D.C.’s Holocaust Museum. The painting was motivated by reading the works of Primo Levi, a Holocaust survivor who committed suicide in 1987. The artist also created a drawing of people waiting at a train station for a New York Times magazine cover dealing with the Jews and their past. It’s an exaggeration to say he has a commitment to the subject, he says, but his interest has been piqued.

Though Rivers still plays the sax in the Climax Band, painting is his focus. His current project is “The History of Hollywood,” three 12-by-16-foot murals commissioned by a client of the Lorias. The piece requires between 25 and 40 preparatory drawings, of which he’s done 11. He’s also been collecting studio photographs from which to draw inspiration.

“Right now I’m up to Bond, James Bond,” Rivers says, flashing a grin. “It’s one of the best things that I’ve done. The commissioner, whom I can’t name yet, is a New Yorker--not a Hollywood guy. But who isn’t interested in movies?”*

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* “History of Matzah: The Story of the Jews,” Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd. Tuesdays-Saturdays, noon-5 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Ends May 30. $6-$8; free for members and children under 12. (310) 440-4500.