By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — Artist Peter Max is a busy, peripatetic man. He squeezed my telephone interview with him into a New York City cab, which he directed, on Wednesday, April 24, to “turn left on 83rd Street” en route to an appointment. He arrived at his destination within nine minutes, so we agreed to finish the short interview about an hour later, when he was at a cafe in uptown Manhattan.
Along the hurried way, we talked about the works he will be showcasing June 8 and June 9 in San Diego at the Peter Max Gallery in the Westfield UTC Mall. According to the publicity already sent out for the event, the exhibition will include Max’s portraits of Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Renoir and Degas.
Prior to my interview with Max, I polled three local artists — Professors Malia Serrano and Jennifer Bennett of Grossmont College (where I serve as an adjunct instructor in Media Communications)– and Viviana Lombrozo on what questions they’d be interested in having Max answer. The following Q&A is an amalgam of some of their questions and mine:
Q: Well, first, this upcoming exhibit in San Diego: you’re putting your own touch on the old master’s works?
A: Yes, that’ a series I started maybe a year ago. I always had images hanging of Matisse, a picture of Matisse; a self-portrait of Van Gogh, on and on. A lot of these painters lived when there was no photography yet, but I had their self portraits. So one day I looked at Van Gogh, and I painted him and I loved the way that it came out. Then I did Matisse, and I loved the way that came out, and then suddenly I decided who else can I do — and I started to do Rembrandt and on and on. Now I’ve done about 20 of them and it is a fantastic series. Homage to the masters, portraits of the masters. And these are masters that I looked up to all my years in art school and many, many years afterwards.
Q. They are all portraits of the artists.
A. Yes all self-portraits of the artists; there were no photographs of them. Well, for Dali there were photographs, and Picasso there were photographs, but the other guys there was no photography, so it is really interesting for me to do that.
Q. What I was curious about is that there is a debate in the art world: what is the line you shouldn’t cross when it comes to the appropriation of images. I was hoping you could lay that out for me.
A. Well I don’t know about that. When I do the Van Gogh self portrait, I am paying homage to him. It is 300 years old and I am not copying his style — I’ve never copied any other artist’s style, I do it all in my style — but I had to take the visual, you know, of what he looks like from his own portraits. When it came to Picasso, Dali, there were great photographs, so I did it from that, but I didn’t do it in a Picasso style or a Dali style, I did all of it in a Peter Max style.
Q. You have to bring something completely new to the image?
A. In my case anyone can see that it is a Peter Max painting; all I got out of the paintings — the self-portraits — was what they looked like, but I didn’t do them within their colors, or within their lines, you know what I mean.
q. Is Chagall in the series?
A. Don’t think I’ve done him yet, no
Q. This being a Jewish newspaper, I was intrigued by one Jewish artist on another
A. Now that you tell me, I’m going to do one!
Q. You had such an interesting life, refugee from Germany, went to Shanghai in the Jewish colony there, then eventually to Israel–was that a Betar ship?
A. That I don’t know but it was a tremendous community in Shanghai, very loving, very beautiful, and then in ’48 just before Mao came, Israel sent a huge ship to Shanghai to pick up about 2200 Jewish people, so we were on the ship luckily, and we arrived in Haifa, and then I lived there 3 1/2 years. Fantastic! My father loved it, loved it, and then we moved to Paris, where we stayed 6 to 9 months, and from there we moved to the United States and we had family here. And I grew up here, went to high school.
Q. How did those different venues influence your art, if at all?
A. It’s all cumulative and what helped me most about art was art school where I studied with an amazing teacher who sat next to Norman Rockwell when they both went to art school together. Rockwell became the famous Rockwell and Reilly (Frank Reilly) became Reilly and he is now well known by being Peter Max’s teacher.
Q. How did you develop the unique style that you have?
A. Yeah, well, I developed it by trial and error, I guess; whatever. It’s not that I tried, it just evolved out of me. I love color. I painted a lot when I was in Shanghai; I painted when I was in Israel, I studied with an Austrian professor, and when I came to America I studied with Reilly (who was a schoolmate of Norman Rockwell), but when I came along, photography took over all the realism, so on my own I became impressionistic and expressionistic and developed my own style. It just happened to me, my style; it’s not like I tried to get to it; but suddenly there it was, a style that was mine.
Q. Now that we are in the digital age, are you using digital or do you still paint?
A. Well, when I paint, I paint, of course, in brushes and paints. Sometimes I play around (with digital), but I really love drawing and painting. Oil paints and acrylic paints and brushes — I just love that media.
Q. Do you still do all your work, or do you have assistants in your studio working with or under you?
A. I have many people working for me, but the painting, the images, they are all invented by me
Q. Over the years, as you become more popular, has your working day changed, the way you go about things?
A. Yeah, well the thing is, I love art, I sing art, I dream art, I talk art — art, art, it’s 24 hours a day for me, images, painting, making images, and I also love that every day, almost every day, something comes out of it that is brand new for me– you know, like I invented something, and I love it.
Q. Can you talk about how your Jewish background may have influenced your art?
A. Well, it influenced my life — my father was fairly religious and he observed all the holidays, Pesach, Purim, Yom Kippur. And I spoke Hebrew. It was nice to grow up like that.
{At my destination, may I call you back?}
Q. Before when we were talking about the masters’ series, you said you were doing the portraits in the style of Peter Max. How would you define that style?
A. It’s really hard to say. If you have a handwriting of your own, and someone says how would you define that handwriting? It was formed 30 years ago and it just evolved. I have my brush strokes, with beautiful colors, and the color combinations are always very well organized in my mind — they come very naturally to me — always the right colors next to each other. Sometimes they are flat colors, sometimes they are color blends, sometimes they are what we call ‘loaded brushes’ with a lot of paint in it, but everything in its proper proportions.
Q. I’ve seen accounts in which people have referred to your work as psychedelic
A. It’s not psychedelic; I mean at the right time, it was a compliment, but it wasn’t psychedelic. It was more impressionistic and expressionistic. And I’m very good at composition and color combinations. I love those things so much.
Q. I was hoping to see how certain artists influenced you. You mentioned Frank J. Reilly.
A. Well, Reilly was my teacher. He taught me anatomy but the people I was inspired by in my early days were Matisse, Picasso, you know people like that, a little bit. But eventually, with my own training, and my own brushwork, they just inspired me.
Q. You mentioned that Reilly and Norman Rockwell sat next to each other.
A. They were both students in the same classroom where Reilly would become the teacher. They studied under George B. Bridgman (at the Art Students League of New York.)
Q. Was Rockwell at all an influence on you?
A. No, no, I was just proud that he was inter-related with the history of my own teacher. He was really quite an interesting man.
Q. Some people compare your works to Andy Warhol’s.
A. Well, because we came out of the same period. You know when you come out of the same period, there are sometimes the same concepts. Also, the modernism is the same, of course. We were using silk screens, both of us, and making litho-prints … and besides we were friends.
Q. In terms of marketing, I just got off a cruise ship where they were featuring your work — the Statue of Liberty series — and I wonder to what degree is your business plan similar to what the late Thomas Kinkade did?
A. I know very little about Kinkade. I just do my own thing; I’m not like anyone else. I’m like — you know a lot of people are unique to themselves and that’s what I think– I don’t look at other people, I don’t do what they do. I just know what works for me.
Q. I’m referring not to your art, of course, but to your marketing — you really get your works out there. You are more successful than most artists in that regard.
A. I’m probably the best-known living artist in the world today and I’m very excited every day when I come to the studio. When I get a few blocks away already the adrenalin rush starts, you know. I can’t believe that within the next 5, 10, 15 minutes I will be with a brush in my hand, music playing, and playing around with colors. I just love that so much.
Q. What kind of music?
A. Any kind of music. Pop music, jazz, be-bop, everything you know. Chick Corea, Everybody.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com