maxxed out to the max

peter max….. the illustrator next door. Copy. Appropriate. But is there some genuine style?

Art Chantry (art@artchantry.com):

Everybody is sick of Peter Max, right? He’s become the ultimate cliche of the 1960’s, right up there with peace signs and flower power. He still commands a big market (and high prices) for his “prints” and even shows up on local tv stations doing “art” commentary (he sits next to the talking heads and draws the news on a pad of paper and shows it at the end of the segment. No joke. I saw him do that.) total crap.He was one of those guys that somehow came to define an era, even though he had no real footprint in the culture of the time. He was an old professional advertising artist floating around the edges of the big leagues. He saw an opening and lunged for it.

I have some old ad illustration annuals depicting his work from the early 60’s. It’s standard run-of-the-mill crosshatch and wash illustration copying the styles popularized by the then current giants of the biz. There is nothing at all distinctive about his work whatsoever. It’s always fun to see the early work of famous illustrators and designers and see how deriviative their thinking actually is. And Peter Max was basically a copy-cat artist.

AC:people will pay enormous dollars for old max crap. yet, nobody gives a hoot about an old chwast or glaser poster. however, them REAL psych posters go for a small fortune, so all is not lost.

This brings me around to copycatting as THE classic post-modernist langauge. Since the death (and painfully slow decay) of modernism, we basically take the styles and ideas of the past and edit them into new situations. The result is a an assemblage or montage sort of cultural expression that stems from the wonders of the design studio process as practiced since time immemorial.

Ee derisively call this ‘appropriation”. Peter Max is a classic post-modernist. He copied other people’s styles and then make them his own. His famous mid-sixties style we all remember was appropriated from famous illustrators of the era jest prior to his emergence, people like Milton Glaser (whom he even copied his signature, shown above), Heinz Edelmann (who did the ‘yellow submarine” movie that most people think max did), and a whole genre of illustration popularized by push pin studios featuring artists like Glaser, Chwast, John Alcorn and a bazillion offspring.

AC:here's a relay funny and totally derivative piece of illustration from peter max's earlier illustration career (circa 1962). please not the embarrassing resemblance to bernie fuch's work (and a bazillion others).

However, Peter Max brought one thing to the table that those other, far more brilliant and original illustrators did not have – he was a tireless hustler with a killer commercial instinct (no doubt learned in the jungles of the professional advertising world.) Peter Max knew how to shmooze and sell his derivative artwork like nobody else of his generation. And THAT is the real reason we remember him. His impeccable timing (on the coattails of the psychedelic revolution) and his masterful craftsmanship. Say what you will about his thinking, but his actual physical production art skills were top notch. I’ve never seen anybody use split fountain palettes and line art with color fields like that guy. He was positively Japanese.

He’s also a perfect example of what I like to call “hallmark psychedelia”. I can explain what I mean best this way: when Victoriana emerged as a style along with the industrial revolution, it also became the first truly industrial style. Victoriana was mass produced decorative style created by anonymous craftsmen using machines for a mass market. When the unavoidable backlash to that style emerged, it came in a form a rebellious organic style focused on the hand made and nature forces of beauty and nature – the “real” world. We call it craftsman style and art nouveau now.

AC:here's another early peter max from the same period of time. note the resemblance to brad holland and the almost generic crosshatching used by nearly every illustrator of the period. exactly how many styles did he 'borrow'? it's hilarious and it won an AWARD! so, the strength of this phenom of der

ive stylistic copycatting is further evidenced by the popular reaction from that period.

Flash forward to the late 1950’s and early 60’s, with it’s classic postwar modernism and high craft advertising style of illustration and “the big idea” headline. When the rebellion happened in our culture in reaction to that industrial style, it came in an extremely similar form of organic artwork and back to nature craftsmanship called psychedelia. The new style was a total and complete rejection of the status quo and even self-consciously drew directly from the artists of the art nouveau and craftsman period. The parallels are stunningly obvious. A lot of psychedelic artist literally copy-catted the art nouveau artists.

Now, when i mention ‘hallmark psychedelia’ and Peter Max, I’m talking about the inevitable reaction to the new rebellious youthful progressive style, the reaction of the marketplace and industry. Victorian businessheads naturally saw a potential profit in the new youthful popular style and attempted to copycat the style. Thus art nouveau and craftsman morphed into art deco. Another brilliant yet industrial style. The same thing happened when ‘punk rock’ became ‘new wave.’ Nothing personal, it’s just business.

AC: i think milton glaser is ripping off mahurin and max is getting all pissed off about it but brad holland sued glazer aver the chwast rip of edelmann's smackdown of mahurin. then there's that penny goldsmith person, always waiting in the wings.. click on image...

Psychedelia morphed into a false, articicial manufactured form organic colorful but decidedly NON-psychedlic stylings that I have arbitrarily named ‘hallmark psychedlia’ (only becuase the hallmark card compnay voraciously attempted to exploit psychedlic stylings in the their products.) Other prime examples of this ‘fake’ pschedelia is the TV show ‘laugh-in.’ There was nothing psychedlic about that show, yet we seem to remember it as a ‘hippie’ style. Close examination revelas almost no similarities, only an ignorant surface copycatting.

Another favorite example are those silly flower stickers that adorned a a million Volkswagons. Those are classic industrial psych. Totally lame and yet we were trained to think by effective marketing that if we stuck them on our cars, they would automatically make up ‘hippies’. The list could go on for ever – the Monkees, easy listening records with psychedelic covers, Nehru collars, etc. etc. and Peter Max. None of these things were real pyschedelia, but industrial marketing commercial product responses to pyschedelia. The distinction may be new to most of us, but once examined becomes obvious.

Which now takes us back to ‘appropriation’. there is a huge and emotional backlash to this seemingly artificial collage and copycatting approach to creativity and there is an entire younger generation who prize ‘originality’ above all else in creative efforts. This is a noble but unfortunately naive new ‘value’ is going to prove difficult to achieve. Our own ignorance of the past has created a situation where creative thought is virtually impossible. If a young artist doesn’t understand the difference between Victoriana and art nouveau, or psychedelia and Peter Max, or punk and new wave, how can they ever deduce the subtleties of something as evasive as ‘originality?’

AC: i just wish i had an ounce of the cheap hustle instinct that peter max has. i'd be rich.... click on image

At this point in my life I’ve seen so much that when I look in design annuals and books extolling the brilliance of “young fresh designers’ (and especially when they use the ‘genius’ word), I have to step back. I can almost always point exactly where they copped their thinking, lifted their ideas. Our creative culture has become a wholesale glop of unoriginal ideas in mash-up of derivative execution. These ‘brilliant young new artists” may not know they are copy-catting, but I sure do. I study this stuff too closely.

My advice? Ignore originality. We live in an era where personality and personal expressive style is where we all deduce meaning, not in original thought. We no longer practice DESIGN, we’ve all become DECORATORS. A child doesn’t learn to walk by INVENTING walking all by their lonesome. They look at other people walking and COPYCAT them to learn how to walk. But, the gait, the flow, the swish, that’s pure style. And that’s where it’s at. At least until we can do better.

---AC:didn't max get sued royal for lifting a goldsmith photo and "arting" it up with colorful squiggles, then selling it as an original effort? seems to me he got really nailed, too. do you remember the details?... click image...