Luxe Life Blog

Exclusive Interview: Artist Peter Max plans weekend visit

Posted November 27, 2009 • 6:00 a.m.

Peter Max.

Photo: TVT

World-renowned artist Peter Max returns to Las Vegas this Thanksgiving weekend to host an in-gallery art exhibit at the Art of Peter Max Gallery. Peter will unveil his newest collection of 16-inch-by-14-inch acrylics on canvas that pay homage to the masters of Expressionism, including Rembrandt, da Vinci, Van Gogh and Picasso. Peter also will inscribe a dedication at his free event tomorrow in The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace.

Recognized as an American icon and internationally acclaimed Pop artist, Peter has been hailed for his paintings of iconic Americana. His psychedelic, multidimensional paintings of historical landmarks in American culture have maintained their signature style and flare throughout his multi-decade career. His art has appeared on everything from a Boeing 777 Continental jumbo jet to the 1999 Woodstock stage to a giant mural at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

A pal of two decades, Peter and I spoke in an exclusive interview from his West Side Manhattan art studios near Lincoln Center:

Robin Leach: Talk about this new exhibition you have at the Las Vegas store. You have created new artworks. Tell me what you have added, where the inspiration came and where you are in your world of art at this moment.

Peter Max: I paint every day. Mornings I can’t wait to get here, and evenings I don’t want to leave. This is that way five and sometimes seven days a week. When I am in New York, you know my studio is big, about 20,000 to 25,000 square feet, and I have painting rooms and rooms I do etching in, rooms I do lithographs. I have 17 full-time archivists working for me who put away in books all the diversity of artwork I do, from drawing to etching to monotypes to prints to lithographs.

All day long, I’m creative, and the second I get a little tired of any given medium, I just shut that area down and go to the next room. I just go do something else. Like if a were a musician, I would put down the flute and go play the piano, and when I would finish with the piano, I would go to the drums, you know what I mean. So like this, I will go from acrylic painting to sketching to painting.

RL: Why do you love so much of it?

PM: I love it because I am good at it. It always gives me a thrill. I sit down and do a sketch, a little drawing that could take me a minute or two. I’m in love with it. That love stays with me till I start an etching in another room. Then I go maybe to the easel where I do an oil painting or an acrylic painting, and I am in love with that. It just goes from little love affairs from one to the other. Sometimes they are laid out on the floor to say, ‘Look, Peter, this is what we did today, and I go, Oh my God, how beautiful.’ I have a full-time DJ who works for me while I am painting.

RL: What kind of music?

PM: All kinds. I am a very big nut for fusion jazz and regular jazz. From the early days of B-Bop, Boogie Woogie and right down to fusion jazz, Chic Correa, Gary Burt and those guys right up to Led Zeppelin and rock and roll. I go back in forth through time, and every time when he plays me a piece, I rate it, with a one finger thumbs up as a one, a two means I like the piece inside the piece, and a three is don’t play it again. One means it goes with the A-list.

I have been doing this with this DJ for a number of years. As he plays me my A’s, my ones, I suddenly envisioned an animated film to go with it. I am now doing one, and we are talking to all kinds of production people and are putting a team together on how I am going to make my first animated film. Today there is something called motion capture. In motion capture, I am able to have a mime pantomime a dance out of a movement I want to do, and in the same two seconds later, you can see it onscreen. You know years ago, if I were to make a film, I would have sketched something out and had it go in a building for editing, and in a month and a half later, you would see 5 seconds or 10 seconds.

RL: The DJ that you have, are you the only artist in the world who has their own DJ?

PM: I don’t know another artist who has a DJ. How I met this guy, he is a photographer and then I found out he was a jazz drummer who has tremendous taste for music, and we started picking albums. No matter what area we are in, he picks the best. He will do photography for me, too, but mostly when I go into the painting room, he is spinning discs. He is one of the secrets of my success.

RL: So what’s new in Las Vegas when you come here?

PM: Well it’s all about diversity. Sometimes there’s more etching, sometimes there’s more works on paper or acrylics. I bring in all kinds of different works just to round out and change around what we had last year or six months earlier when I had a show there. I make sure there is a lot of diversity for the gallery for the gallery staff. Diversity for the collector who had been there four months earlier and come back, and there is so much more stuff now.

RL: How many galleries do you have now across the world?

PM: About 30 to 40 galleries, so I have to be prolific. I do about two or three shows every year in each gallery, plus I do two museum shows every year. These are huge shows, and these shows are 40,000 to 80,000 feet of artwork. I had a show in the De Young Museum in San Francisco, the largest attendance they have ever had. I would say about 80 percent say to me that it is the biggest turnout we have ever had. So I am very lucky to have a huge following. One day a few years ago, I was invited by Mikhail Gorbachev just as he was in his final year to have a show at the Hermitage St. Petersburg in Russia, which is the biggest in the world like the Louvre. And here I am nervous for the show in Russia. I say to my guys, ‘Hey, no one knows me in Russia. No one is going to show up.’ So one of my guys says, ‘Look, come to the window.’ There must be 300 people in line downstairs, so I was happy. But little did I know the line continued for 45 blocks and 14,000 to 15,000 people crammed into this 55,000 square foot museum show. It was so huge, you couldn’t even move. It was the largest turnout in the history of the Soviet Union.

RL: Let me ask you a funny question. Have you ever created a painting and regretted selling it?

PM: There have been. I created a painting that sometimes I don’t like and then when they buy it, I regret that they bought it cause I loved it so much. I turn my mind around. I kind of love my work. I really love the pieces I do.

RL: Do you have your art pieces in your home?

PM: Yes, I have pieces, but not that many pieces of my own. I have things I have collected. I have Andy Warhol, Picasso, Mastiff and a Peter Max in there because I happen to know the artist.

RL: Do you like coming to Las Vegas with your art?

PM: I like it very much. David, the art dealer there, used to be the promotion manager for The Moody Blues. So being a bit of a rock and roll nut, I always enjoy meeting him. One day he told me how he was going to open a gallery in Las Vegas. I thought that would be great, so we decided to have a show with him. Now he has a Peter Max Gallery all year round.

People can pick up my book at Barnes & Noble, Borders or Amazon. It’s called The Art of Peter Max. It’s the No. 1 art book in the United States for the past five years, the biggest art book in almost the history of art, and people can bring it to the gallery because I sign everyone’s book free of charge with a little doodle. And anyone who buys a piece of artwork, they get the book from the gallery as a gift, and I sign it on the back with another doodle.

Peter, known as the U.S.’s Painter Laureate, has painted for six presidents and also created the official artwork and posters for the Clinton inauguration. He not only produced the art that appeared on the first U.S. 10-cent stamp to preserve the environment, but also the murals at each of the 235 U.S. border crossings and led the renovation of the Statue of Liberty.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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