Peter Max Art in Los Angeles Times in 1960s
A psychedelic pop pioneer, artist Peter Max deftly captured the visual zeitgeist of the Sixties – the peachy colors, the hippie-trippy swirling visuals, the bell-bottomed, flowing paisley fashions – and parlayed his talents into an astonishingly lucrative career of graphic design. Cartoon on London fashion maven Mary Quant's mod-inspired bloom power and Florentine fashion designer Emilio Pucci'due south new romantic kaleidoscopic color block fabric prints, Max was more 'factory' than his peer Andy Warhol (minus Warhol'southward celebrity scene, though), churning out, via mass product, vibrantly hued posters thank you to an innovative four-colour printing process.
Commercial commissions flooded in. From dreamy-cool and childlike animated Television set ads for seven-Up soda to illustrated products for General Electric, Max produced pop upwardly pop art and in three short years managed to accrue a whopping seventy-two licensing deals with major corporations. Producing merchandise such as swimsuits, electrical guitars, sneakers, socks and clocks, his numerous lines of products went on to generate more than than $1.9 billion in retail sales. Not bad for a creative true cat in the swinging sixties! No wonder his disembodied face up grinned from the embrace of Life Magazine in 1969, subtitled with an ironic nod to James Joyce, 'Portrait of the artist as a very rich man.'
Producing innumerable artworks, on sail, paper or board, for the past half dozen decades (and counting) 75-year-erstwhile Max just keeps doing what he loves. "I've got plans for the adjacent hundred years!" His paintings are constantly beingness exhibited. "Every weekend I go to a dissimilar city and have an art show. I've had fifty or so one-homo art shows in the biggest museums in the earth."
Equally for the toll range of his works, Max claims, "I don't remember any more, because I'yard not so much into that… They tin can become from $7k—10k for the smaller works on paper to $40k—70k for very big pieces." Max says he likewise has quite a few paintings in his studio gallery in New York that sell for a absurd million. "I go those kinds of prices," he murmurs.
Throughout the decades his style has evolved from psychedelic rainbow cosmic popular art to illustrated photographs, each energetically swiped with splashes of vibrant colors. Chock with deliriously happy swirls, a touch on of whimsy endures in all of Max's distinctive works. "Fashion has an evolution of its ain. Sometimes when I lift my brush, information technology's a certain mood or the music I'g listening to that drives me."
His 'New Masters series,' include interpretive works of Vincent van Gogh (his self portrait),Monet, Pablo Picasso, Renoir and Edgar Degas (ballerinas) – all conceived in Max'south signature flowing style and brilliant 24-hour interval-glo colors. On exhibit atGallery 319 during February, other works on display illustrate the latitude of his career, including his famed "Flag" and majestic "Statue of Liberty" series, equally well as a selection from the countless celebrity portraits he'south painted, which include the past vii U.S. presidents.
These days Max works exclusively from photographs. Despite his formal art training at theArt Students League of New York in Manhattan during the fifties, studying anatomy, figure drawing and limerick, Max has never worked with live models. "That was a hundred years ago," he laments. "People don't sit down any more for artists. I've painted major, major celebrities and political figures. I've been very, very lucky. You hang out with them, accept java for hours, but when you paint them, yous exercise it in a studio by yourself from a photo."
At Max's bustling Brooklyn atelier, he reportedly has close to fifty people on staff archiving his output, handling commissions, sales, interview requests and gallery appearances and even prepping canvasses for the maestro to dive in and flamboyantly daub. Max besides has a full-fourth dimension music supervisor/DJ assisting him with music option for an upcoming series of blithe movies. Many people erroneously associate Max with The Beatles' animated concoction 'Yellowish Submarine' but despite his personal association with the Fab 4, Max did non work on the characteristic motion picture. (Information technology was art directed by Heinz Edelmann.) Max has seven full-length animated features of his own in development. "Each are individual. They're all Peter Max. Stories I tin can tell from forenoon 'till dark – I'm a storyteller in my art." The irrepressible artist laughs, "I have plenty visuals for one,000 films!"
This interview first appeared in Ventura Blvd magazine, February/March 2013 issue, equally per photo below.
Peter Max's'New Masters series' collection and other artwork was both on exhibition and available for acquisition atGallery 319 in Woodland Hills fromFebruary sixth, 2013 – February 17th, 2013.
To purchase prints or make inquiries regards the purchase of paintings, visit the official site for Peter Max.
To read more than manufactures from Ventura Blvd magazine,
go here.
Pauline Adamek
Source: https://www.artsbeatla.com/2013/02/peter-max/
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