Photograph by Scott Lechner
One of America's greatest living artists is now part of the Los Gatos scene
Art should be seen in galleries and on MTV
By Suzanne Cristallo
Take any major event in America, and Peter Max is probably creating something big for it. For Generation X, his name may draw a blank, but for most of the gently aged who remember the '60s, Peter Max is, well--far out.
Along with the music of the Beatles, with whom he collaborated on Yellow Submarine, Max's art embodied the spirit of the '60s. He became one of the most celebrated artists of his generation, a popular hero whose work spoke to the masses and adorned album covers, posters, ties, mugs and vehicles. Three decades later, Max continues to be prolific, and is, arguably, the last of the great American pop artists, having outsurvived Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Roy Lichtenstein.
Today he's a laid-back guy with a cool mustache and a warm heart--able to initiate lively talk about things other than himself, in spite of the fact that there's so much of him to discuss and so much going on to make him weary.
Max was in Los Gatos about two weeks ago, to kick off the permanent display of his art at the Virtual Gallery on N. Santa Cruz Avenue. The gallery is the exclusive dealer for his work in Silicon Valley, an area he has embraced because of his fascination with high technology--he has collaborated with such firms as Apple, SGI and Live Picture.
The reception for Max drew some 500 local enthusiasts who showed up hoping to chat with him or perhaps to get his autograph. They were a mixed group--the fashionable, the casual, some there by design, some just passing by. A few bought his art and got their picture taken with the artist. A video crew strolled through the crowd, shooting footage for a documentary, one of several to be used on the Learning and Discovery channels.
Bridget Oates, 33, who grew up in Los Gatos, came from San Francisco to meet Max and to ask a few questions about his work. She was inheriting from her grandmother a Max painting of the French painter, Toulouse Lautrec. She wanted a little history to go with it. Max remembered the piece well; it was done in the mid-'70s for Circle Gallery.
A fellow attired in a brilliantly colored tie-dyed shirt, a black cowboy hat taming a mass of long black hair, was enthralled with what he saw on the wall. "I look at this guy's work, and it just stones me!" he exclaimed. "I want to go home, get my paints and do something!"
A group of teenage boys spotted Max in conversation. "Hey, Max," interrupted 16-year-old Paul Ruel, a student at Homestead High, "Are you the guy who did all these paintings?" Indeed he was. "Then can I be your apprentice? I'm in Art 2 now. Can I give you my pager number?" Max, it was explained, was a New Yorker, a little out of range. But Max advised the youth, "Just draw as much as you can."
Drawing is what Max does everyday. Constantly. He keeps 2x3-inch slick cards in his pocket for drawing at any moment. He draws while he is interviewed, draws first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. Creating is his way of life.
On a typical day at home in New York, he starts around 8 or 9 a.m. with drawing, interrupting it briefly for a shower, and continues until eating a light breakfast of egg whites and dry toast. Then more drawing. "At that point I might watch a little TV and make notes for the day," he says. Next, he walks the 19 blocks to work if he has time, or his driver delivers him to his studio while he handles some telephone calls on the way. "Once at my studio, I go to my office to look at the upcoming day. If there are no appointments, I lock the door and turn on the red light which means 'Peter is painting.'" After about two hours, he emerges to "run around the studio and see what projects are going. I may do some editing of a video or more drawing which can continue until midnight."
Through it all, he still has time to talk to his children--daughter Libra Max, a songwriter and performer, and son Adam Max, an attorney--three times a day. Of course, there is time for Mary, his wife of two years with whom he had a chance meeting some three years back. More of that story later.
So how does someone who has painted for five American presidents, been named "Official Artist" for the World Cup USA, the Super Bowl, the Grammy Awards, the New Orleans Jazz Festival and opened the Woodstock Festival--all in 1994 alone--find the time?
Max has a staff of 80, including three secretaries who keep him on track in a 40,000-square-foot studio, a place he describes as being full of "lots of love and lots of movie stars." He recently did portraits of Michael Douglas, Al Gore, Richard Branson and presently is doing Sharon Stone.
"The thing that has made it all happen is I've always been a dreamer," he reflects. "I haven't let anyone get in the way of my dreams." So, he hires follow-through people, people who can take his ideas and make them happen while he paints sometimes 10 hours a day. On weekends, he travels to his art shows in various parts of the United States. The time on board the plane often is spent with representatives of groups that interest him. "Even when I'm not painting, I'm being creative," he emphasizes, referring to his recent West Coast trip which involved time spent with Silicon Graphics. "I'll be doing an animated movie, and they will be the group I use," he says, smilingly dismissing any further questions on the subject.
"The world is starving for creativity," he observes, "and there are so many ideas to execute." Some staff members accompany him on trips to take notes. Back home, those notes full of ideas are turned by his group into concrete projects.
"Everything I do is creative" whether it's a conversation with a fan or a chairman of the board or the editing of a video tape. "It's all about creativity ... Creation loves creativity ... No one has been able to explain the 'why' of Creation [of our world]. I just say, because the world is a creation, and if we are aware enough of that, then the greatest act we can do is to continue this creation ... I almost consider myself a blackbelt in creativity."
A sampling of his acuity can be seen in what Max has done for five of the last presidents. For Gerald Ford, he did "Peter Max Paints America," one painting for every state in the Union. For Carter, there were the "Liberty Projects," plus, he now is working on putting art in every house renovated for the poor by Habitat for Humanity, one of the projects in which the former president is actively involved. "If he can work hard, so can I," Max says.
Photograph by Scott Lechner
In 1981, Max painted six Statue of Liberty heads for President Ronald Reagan. Painting the heads has become an annual Fourth of July project for the artist.
For Ronald Reagan, he painted the head of the Statue of Liberty in 1981. He did six of them for him. Painting the Liberty head had become an annual, Fourth of July event for Max since 1976. Publicity about the annual event led to the restoration of the statue in 1986. During its unveiling, Lee Iacocca accompanied Max on site while he painted 11 giant Liberty heads. Last October, one of Max's Liberties graced the front pages of Metro and Metro Santa Cruz, sister publications of the Weekly-Times. (A recent Max cover came out in April when the Metro ran a story on the trend for building outsized houses in the Valley) Presently, several versions of Liberty are hanging in the Los Gatos gallery for sale along with scores of other pieces.
For George Bush, there was a "Thousand Points of Light," and for Bill Clinton's inauguration, 100 Max portraits of Clinton appeared on stage.
"That was a labor of love," Max says of the Clinton project. "The first time I had dinner with the Clintons, Mrs. Clinton told me, 'The President and I are huge Peter Max fans.'" The First Couple commissioned him to do a Clinton poster, then called again to up the number of posters, and again, and again. "It ended up I did 100 portraits in three and a half weeks," he recalls. He also, by the way, did "Forty Gorbys" and just finished six Hillaries.
Max has been able to keep politics out of his work for the presidents. "I love all the presidents, because my philosophy is: if someone has been chosen president, we should honor and serve him," he muses. "I don't like the side of America that rips down presidents. It would make us a much better country if, instead, we applauded and honored them."
Max was born overseas, and left the country of his birth at a young age when his father, an importer-exporter, fled Nazi Germany. Young Max lived in Shanghai, Tibet, South Africa, Israel and France before coming to the United States.
He started drawing as a child in Shanghai. "Everybody drew there," he recalls. "I thought it was what everybody did, like others taking piano or ballet. I didn't know it could be a profession. What I wanted was to be an astronomer. The stars and galaxies always held a fascination for me. Those symbols today are all over my art."
When he was 16, Max arrived in America and became indelibly imprinted with the diversity, color and motion of the country.
He showed promise in art early and was offered several scholarships. Instead of accepting them, he chose to attend New York's Art Students' League in Manhattan. It was the school of Norman Rockwell, whose illustrations were made famous on the cover of Saturday Evening Post. "It was a school of realism--glass is glass, water is wet, skin is skin," he says. He spent seven years there and came out one of the best in the school's history.
"But when I came out, there was no interest in realism. It had become an old art form." Instead, photographers with high speed cameras who could shoot 45 frames in a row within a minute, then crop and edit the results, were dominating the scene. "When I saw the ease with which they created, I decided I didn't want to compete ... then China burst through me. My subjects became cosmic and spiritual, like flowers, angels and hearts, and I realized I wanted to paint what I felt, not what was posed."
At 25, he entered the commercial art field, his "Cosmic Period" became adapted to graphics. The '60s flowered with his work on everything from greeting cards to alarm clocks. "While I was drawing and painting, I had allowed a commercial side to develop," he explains, adding "Art should be seen in galleries and on MTV."
As it developed, the commercial side of his art earned a billion dollars. He rejects the notion he is a business genius. "That part has never been important to me," he says. "The world is starving for creativity. ... what is important is that ideas are executed. They are gifts from God."
In 1971, Max stopped licensing his work and returned to drawing, painting and meditation, a skill he perfected in association with the Hindu Swami Satchidananda who had come to America at Max's behest to establish the Integral Yoga Center.
Since then, he has developed what many believe is a mastery of neo-expressionism, in which forms derived from nature are distorted and colors intensified for the purpose of art.
And what is art? It's a question that has been argued in classrooms, living rooms and galleries for generations. The dictionary has 15 definitions. Max has his own: "Every artist or creative person has a right to call his art art ... What fulfills him is his art. Certain styles may be in fashion, and some people may be offended by seeing what is not in style," he observes, concluding, "Who's to say where art starts and where it ends?"
Photograph by Scott Lechner
During the April 23 and 24 receptions at the Virtual Gallery, Peter Max described for Arlene and Robert Brenner his plans for a trip to Seattle to paint a Boeing 777 airplane.
Acquiring Max's art is a serious decision. A signed, numbered print runs around $2,250. An acrylic over lithograph paper (ALP), which is a print painted over by the artist to make it "unique," might be $7,000. An acrylic on canvas--the most durable form--can run $36,000, or "what the market bears," according to Kevin Humpheries, a gallery consultant.
But the piece de resistance probably would be an acrylic on Buell priced at $60,000 which is on display at the gallery. The Buell is in this instance is a motorcycle by Harley Davidson with a Peter Max paint job. Some leather-garbed lovers of "the hog," however, might prefer a paint job other than the sky blue with polka dots, lavender, pink and yellow that the Max edition sports.
As pricey as his art is, Max gives a lot away to support women's rights, environmental issues, and human and animal rights. Under the auspices of his "Global Works," he calculates he does three charitable things a day. There have been 6,800 projects in the last eight years. "We never ask who the charities are, we just welcome them when they call," he says. As a result, his office is overwhelmed by charity requests made easier by a cordial reception.
Mary? It's a nice story, and Max loves telling it.
He was walking out of his studio to get a cup of coffee when he saw her the first time. She was standing and talking with two others. "I said to my friend, 'See that girl? I'm going to marry her!'" His friend grunted patronizingly and headed for the cappuccino. Max's legs could not move. "Do me a favor," he said, "Let's get closer. You face me, so I can see her over your shoulder and draw her." Max took a slick 2x3 card from his pocket and on it drew a perfect profile. "She looked like she could be Sharon Stone's younger, more beautiful sister. I handed her the drawing, and she thanked me politely. Her friends recognized me, but she thought I was a street artist. I gave her my name and told her my studio was across the street."
Two days passed without a call. Max had put his staff to the task of finding out who Mary Baldwin was, starting with the Actor's Studio. "I figured she had to be an actress, the way she looked." But it was while Max was at Banana Republic helping a new female employee select some studio work clothes that the call came. Mary was across the street waiting. Flustered, Max asked the very stylish salesman if he should meet Mary with all of the selected dresses over his arm. "Absolutely not!" snapped the man with a dramatic flourish. "So I just took my milkshake and met her." Two years later in July, Peter married Mary, a professional ice skater. "She likes her name--Mary Max," he says with a grin.
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
