It is difficult to think of the late 1960s without thinking of Peter Max, whose cosmic compositions of floating stars, rainbows, planets, saints and people seemed to capture the feeling-groovy spirit of that era.
Max`s vividly colored images-which adorned posters, scarfs, clothes and who knows what else-made their way into an astonishing number of American households at that time, and the artist achieved the sort of fame that generally is earned only by rock musicians or movie stars.
Then in 1970 and `71, Max decided that business demands and celebrity were getting in the way of his creativity. So he pulled out of the spotlight, and he stayed out for about a decade and a half.
Now Max is back, though he hasn`t brought back the 1960s with him. His new art looks very different from his earlier work.
”I allowed my style to change when the will was there for it to become something else. I didn`t stop (the change) because I felt that I`m known for
(a certain style) or that it has sold,” the 48-year-old artist said last week during a visit to Hanson Art Galleries in Beverly Hills, where a selection of his recent paintings, drawings, mixed-media works and limited-edition prints is on display.
Max has veered away from the cartoonish look of his earlier art, in which he crisply outlined his images and filled them in with patches of flat color. He has swapped that hard-edged look for a looser, more expressive one.
Now he suggests lines or shapes rather than fully articulating them-and in his paintings in particular, he adds texture to lines or shapes by allowing the trails of the brush bristles to remain visible. He also allows swatches of color to flow into one another now, rather than applying them in flat, clearly defined patches.
As in his previous work, Max`s current art contains a lot of vivid color, and it still conveys a feel-good spirit.
As for subject matter, Max likes to depict classically beautiful women, usually showing close-up profiles of their faces or full-length views of their reclining figures. He also depicts sage people and angels, and a couple of enigmatic characters he calls Dega Man and Zero Megalopolis.
Max talked about all of this in a free-flowing conversation that drifted from musings about his art to impassioned statements about philosophy, astronomy, concern for the environment and humane treatment of animals. His mind seemed to be working on the same level of cosmic hyperawareness as his art.
The artist sounded fairly coherent when he focused on one topic at a time, however. For instance, these were his comments about what he hopes to communicate in his current art: ”It is completely personal. I am not interested in the viewer, and I`m not interested in the collector or the museums. It`s very selfish, and I do it only for myself.”
He compared his work to that of a modern dancer alone in a room who is dancing only for himself. If he were a dancer in that situation, he said, ”I would do configurations that were completely personal and private. At the end of an hour or so, I would have gotten something very creative out of my system. And that`s what I get when I stand in front of a painting.”
Max apparently has a great deal of fun when he`s working, because he talked about the creative process with enthusiasm.
”Most of my work is very brushy, very abstract,” he said. ”I paint in powerful strokes . . . I dance in front of the canvas and I`m very, very free. I let colors and shapes and everything occur.”
”His hand really does dance when he paints, and his feet go with it. It reminds me of Mick Jagger,” interjected Rosie Vela, the model-turned-singer/ songwriter who used to live with Max and who was visiting with him at the gallery.
Max explained that he also engages in more disciplined artistic exercises every day. ”It`s like if I was a keyboard player, let`s say. It`s like I`m doing scales three, four times a day. Then I let anything happen that I wish-I go very, very jazzy.”
Max isn`t worried about whether his current art will become as wildly popular as his earlier work. ”I didn`t look for (fame) back then, and I`m not looking for it now. I`m a bystander watching the fame happen. . . . It happens, and it`s kind of curious to me. It`s almost not a great thing to have, because it takes away privacy.”
It also takes away time from creating art, which was why Max decided in the early `70s to wind down the business he had created around himself. He estimated that in about 1970, more than a billion dollars of Max-related products were on the market. This meant that he was operating a huge studio in which about 55 people worked, and he was constantly obliged to attend meetings or to zip here and there on business.
”It was too much for me,” Max said. ”But I didn`t realize it, so I tried to make up by drawing on airplanes and painting in hotel rooms.”
After pulling out of the fast lane, Max spent several years devoting most of his time to painting and drawing.
In the 1980s, Max began to make periodic ventures back into the limelight. One of the most prominent occurred in 1981, when Nancy Reagan asked him to paint images of the Statue of Liberty as part of President Reagan`s first Fourth of July celebration at the White House. Soon thereafter, Max became heavily involved in the massive private-sector fundraising effort to restore the Statue of Liberty.
Max began to re-establish himself in the art scene with a few small shows in 1985 and `86. He had a major show at the Beverly Hills Hanson gallery last January, after he had signed a multimillion-dollar deal with art dealer and publisher Scott Hanson.
Nowadays, Max`s paintings can sell for as much as $250,000, and even his small mixed-media works are priced from about $1,500. Yet the art is selling well. The cross-country Hanson galleries, headed by Hanson, sold several million dollars of Max`s art in 1988, according to Richard Chasen, the company`s chief operating officer. Chasen said a broad spectrum of people buy Max`s art, including young professionals who liked the artist`s work in the
`60s and now have the money to afford it.
Max now works in a large studio on Manhattan`s Upper West Side, and he has built his staff back up to about 33 people.
In his earlier career, his fine art was all but overlooked amid the profusion of commercial items. Nowadays, Max seems determined to concentrate on his fine art. Yet his images are back on mass-market items.
