Peter Max, whose colorful, psychedelic pop art expressed the optimism of the “flower power” movement of the 1960s and graced everything from postage stamps to a cruise ship, has died at 88, his son said in a written statement Wednesday.
Max died on Monday, the statement said. No cause was given, but he had been suffering from advanced dementia.
Max began his career in graphic design in the 1960s, and his swirly, colorful, instantly recognizable designs epitomized the era’s “flower power” art. But thanks to his prolific output and fun, accessible style, Max’s work remained popular well into the 21st century.
Max was the official artist for the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the Indianapolis 500, the World Cup, the World Series and many other events. His art appeared on a Boeing 777 airplane and a Norwegian Cruise Line ship. His portrait subjects ranged from U.S. presidents to Taylor Swift.
But in his first flush of success in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his mural-like tableaus of flowers, the cosmos and cartoonish figures — all in vivid colors like turquoise, orange and neon green — seemed to be everywhere. Dorm room walls were plastered with his posters. Household furnishings like clocks and bedspreads sported his designs.
He even created covers for the Manhattan Yellow Pages, a business phone directory distributed to millions of people. Max himself was featured on the cover of Life magazine in 1969, his trademark dark, bushy mustache framing a hearty grin.
“We will remember his extraordinary creativity, his warmth, his curiosity, and the way he saw beauty and possibility everywhere,” his son Adam Max said in the statement announcing the death. “His art became part of American culture, but the man behind that art — the father we knew and loved — is the person we will miss most.”
Family fled Nazi Germany
Max was born Peter Max Finkelstein in 1937 to a Jewish family in Berlin. They fled Nazi Germany for Shanghai when he was a baby and later spent time in Tibet, Israel and Paris before settling in New York City when Max was 16. By then, he said in an interview, he was already “a huge fan of American culture”: comics, movies and “all the jazz music.”
Max studied in New York at the Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute. In 1961, he opened a graphic design studio with friends. His bold, unique style was an immediate hit with ad agencies, publications, the corporate world and in pop culture.
That led to a booming commercial business. “My work was really, I would say, almost exploited,” he said. “It was on mugs, it was on bedsheets, it was on dresses, it was on silks and scarves and ties — 70 product lines.”
But what “bothered” him about all that success, he said, was that he “wasn’t painting anymore.” So he shut the business down for a time in the early 1970s to reconnect with his art. One of his biggest projects after returning to public life was a series of portraits of the Statue of Liberty, painted at the White House at the invitation of first lady Nancy Reagan in 1981.
Max weathered various controversies in his personal and professional life. He pleaded guilty to tax fraud in 1997 after the IRS alleged he concealed more than $1 million in income from his art. He was originally sentenced to two months in prison but ultimately was allowed instead to serve the time in a work-release program, pay the back taxes and a $30,000 fine, and perform 800 hours of community service teaching art in Harlem schools.
In 2015, his family life became tabloid fodder in a back-and-forth between his second wife, Mary Max, and Adam, his son from a previous marriage. The son and a guardian alleged that Mary Max had depleted his finances and browbeat him. She in turn claimed that they had kept him from her against his will and stolen paintings that belonged to her. Accounts of court appearances described him as frail.
In 2019, Mary Max died by suicide two weeks after The New York Times published a story detailing legal battles over his work.
His art had a bright, happy vibe
Those dark allegations contrasted with the relentlessly bright, happy vibe that infused his work. “The colors are strong, sometimes loud, sometimes raw and sometimes harmonious, but always powerful, and the images are always on the side of the peaceful nature,” he said. “I don’t discuss in my paintings negative things, I don’t dwell on it in my mind and don’t dwell on it in my canvasses.”
In another interview, he summed it up like this: “I see everything through rainbow eyes.”
Although accounts of Max’s career sometimes lament that he was not taken seriously by the art establishment, in fact his work has been featured in dozens of museum exhibitions around the world. New York’s Museum of Modern Art owns seven of his works.
The art for the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” is sometimes mistakenly attributed to Max, but the design for the album cover and “Yellow Submarine” movie are officially credited to the late Heinz Edelmann. Max claimed in a 2012 interview he did the original “Yellow Submarine” design before handing it off to Edelmann. But the website for New York’s Park West gallery, a longtime dealer of Max’s art, described Max’s involvement in “Yellow Submarine” as “early consulting work.”
Max was, however, friends with the Beatles and many other celebrities. He also had a deep interest in Eastern spirituality. He brought “Swami” Satchidananda Saraswati to the U.S., and helped him popularize yoga here.
Max’s first marriage to Elizabeth Nance ended in divorce. In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Libra Astro.
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