Notebook: Aug. 26, 2002

DIED. LARRY RIVERS, 78, iconoclastic painter and sculptor who helped pave the way for the Pop Art movement; of liver cancer; in Southampton, N.Y. After studying the old masters in Paris, Rivers injected ironic humor into the earnest, Abstract Expressionist-dominated art world of the 1950s, with such works as Washington Crossing the Delaware, a parody of the famous American painting. A saxophonist, writer and sometime actor (appearing in the Beat-era underground film Pull My Daisy), he was both self-promoting and self-deprecating. Hospitalized once in the '80s, he envisioned his obituary headline as GENIUS OF THE VULGAR DIES AT 63.

RESIGNED....

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