Peter+Max

**__ Artist: __** __ P e t e r Max __
http://store.petermax.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_11_13&products_id=29 When I look at this painting I see...well more like feel, uniqueness and joy. I mean when you hear "angel!" you have to admit you feel the setro typically joy that angels should represent. And if for some reason you don't feel joy, well then...I'm sorry. Question! Is it just me or do you see the second figure? Now I could be totally wrong with this but...just look! Can't see it? Here I'll help you. Do you see the heart? It's lopsided right!? OK now look at the weird face. It's also miss-formed. One last thing, look at the left arm. Now either that arm is cropped off or...it's not an arm at all, but a hoodie. That or Peter Max made some pretty bad mistakes. Here is some more facts to prove my point. Look at the face again. Focus mostly on the way it's tilted. To me it seems to be happy...no overjoyed! The caring look it gives off...the warm, happy colors the head is made out of. *Sigh* Heart warming. Now look at the way the right shoulder comes up, like it's holding something or cradling something precious. Also the lines around the heart, drawing your attention, are also slightly covered. Showing that the entity that they're drawn on is round...like a child....? After researching more information I found that this painting is supposed to be a "magnificent expressionistic image conveying higher ideals of spirit and compassion embodied in a colorful angelic figure." Again as Peter Max puts it. In other words it's supposed to be about a good angel. Like there is bad ones.... http://store.petermax.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_11_25&products_id=83 Colorful. That is all I see but what I feel is more. Beauty, passion, hope, strange (in a good way). This piece like many others he has done is gorgeous. In more ways than one. With the stars and spaceships in the background and the beautiful flowers on the side and the boats a float in the body of water. It reminds me of celebrations. Those celebration or festivals some people go to where they're out on boats and they release lanterns into the night sky. To honor the dead. Also all the reparation in the painting make me think that he painted this off of feelings he had in his real life at the time. Maybe he was in love. Maybe he was inspired. Maybe he felt like he finally fit in. Maybe he just felt like painting a beautiful painting with weird flowers on the side, white repeating birds and spaceships flying around. With white glowing stars and colorful boats. Just maybe.... http://store.petermax.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_11_26&products_id=89 Waiting for a new dawn or chance. The end is near. Change. Loneliness. Lost yet hope. These are just a few emotion I feel looking at this painting. The title Air & Space just give me the shivers. I don't know about you but that title tells me he might have been going through a hard time or felt distanced from everybody else. I mean look at the little planet in the back ground, that planet could have meant home and the planet he is standing on right now, all alone, is what he felt like at the point in time.
 * __ First Impression: __**
 * __ Second Impression: __**
 * __ First Impression: __**
 * __ First Impression: __**

After some research I learned that this painting was greatly influenced by space.
 * __ Second Impression: __**

http://store.petermax.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_11_25&products_id=87 Good morning!! Oh wait.... Again with the repeating birds and spaceships. Peter Max must have had a thing for spaceships and white birds. Maybe he wanted to fly, so he admires the birds because they can fly? Or maybe he wanted to be astronaut and go to outer space. Or maybe he believed in aliens and war shipped them. Or maybe not.... Also those weird flowers are back, But this time they're in different colors. The Sun's reflection reminds me of a heavenly path. So maybe he believes in a higher being or maybe he was near death when he painted this. The blues and purples remind me of loneliness again, so maybe the path is the path away from being alone. Maybe? All I know is that this guy really liked weird flowers, bright colors, white birds, and spaceships. Also the warm colors makes me feel warm...yeah that is all. After gathering more information I learned that Peter Max meant nothing special about this painting. No hidden meaning or clues. He meant it to look like a sunset. "The radiating lines of related, warm, graduated color suggest the glow of a rising sun." As Peter Max put it. http://store.petermax.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_11_26&products_id=88 First off look in the corner of the painting there is a year dates (1969/1999) and the words Apollo 11. The miss arranged and bright colors really pop out and yell celebration! The really detailed astronaut shows how much time he put in. And the amount of time an artist puts into one painting really matters. It tells us that this painting either meant really special to that artist or he/she was a real perfectionist. And I don't get the perfectionist vibe from him. After some research I learned that Peter Max did indeed painted this around the time Apollo 11 was lunched. And if you read about Peter Max's life you will learn that Peter Max himself was great interested in space. Starting in Germany at the young age of 1, Peter Max an inspiring artist moved to many countries. Each country building up more skill. Countries like... China, Tibet, Israel and France. In China though was the real starting place of his interests. While staying in a town called Shanghai, his home sat right next to a Buddhist monastery. Where, in the morning, he would study the monks who painted ,with large bamboo brushes, beautiful Chinese characters on vase sheets of rice paper. At night was the time to listen to choir of harmonic voices that rang from a temple called Sikh. This temple lied on the other side of Peter Max's house. In a place like Shanghai who's imagination wouldn't fly, with all the parades going around with big dragons bobbing in the sky and the chimes ringing with the gongs in the background echoing. It was a magical place. But even with all this, young Peter Max was not content. No! Could not be content. For young Peter Max's mind was always racing and lighting up to the word America. Peter Max was always fascinated in American comics and loved to listen to American jazz. Heck! His real dream was to move to America and become an artist. But before all that happened cold happen Peter Max began to study painting under a Austrian expressionist, Professor Honik. While he studied painting his creativity came from his fashion designer mom and a observatory that he visited at Mt. Carmel. That observatory not only gave inspiration to many of his space paintings but reawakened a fascination that Peter Max had, that he probably once buried as a child about space. He was so fascinated by space again his parents signed him up for a astronomy class. Thus studying astronomy and painting became a natural thing to Peter Max. It was in Paris that Peter Max became interested in realism paintings and classical art. Finally though Peter Max had been catapulted into the future of New York City. The place he'd been dreaming of seeing. The towering buildings, the movie theaters, the pop art of fashion, automobiles, and not to mention the tower that towered over all, The Empire State Building! Now to set out on a new journey through 1958 to the end of 1962. Where Peter Max sets out to learn the skills to be a realism painter. Starting at the Art Students League in Manhattan, Max began studying the formal art under Frank Reilly, a realism painter with some impressing background. Like in all things, Max's desire to master realism was strong and showed; from morning classes of sketching to dinner time in the evening, He studied anatomy, figure drawing, perspective, light and shadow, fabrics and textures, and composition. He used many different types of tools; from Oil paining to watercolors to pastels to charcoal, Peter Max was determined to master it all. Even in his free time did he study from the masters and their paintings in the museums. He learned light and composition from Rembrandt and precise representation of form from Valesquez. Not to mention the photographic exactitude from Bouguereau and the confident and stylistic brushstrokes from Sargent. All pays off to what Peter Max said "It gave me the gift of observation- the purity of seeing a thing clearly as it was." Time to hit more books for Max is going to college. Eager with the new mid- '60s counterculture explosion, Max wanted to learn more about the history of artist in the past or just the history of art in general. But in the end collage was more into the modern day art styles and although collage had already established a great technique of Modernism, the use of photographic images in kaleidoscopic patterns was founded by Max. Kaleidoscopic meaning multicolored. With collage being over Peter couldn't help but feel the on coming impact of the '60s underground Cultural Revolution. Giving him the bright idea to take all his original paintings and turn them into posters to share with the youth of this world, and getting a bright idea was kind of Peter Max's thing. Only Peter Max would say using a printing press to make a "split fountain" of colors blending was like playing a electric piano. Soon all the collage studies around America were looking a Peter Max's posters in the hall. "The Age of Aquarius" better own as the great American renaissance or the the "sixties" was the time for Peter Max to spread his true wings and visually capture the creative spirit and the promise of the dawning of this new age. Now a days though Peter Max at the age of 79 would whether spend his days painting in peace at home.
 * __ First Impression: __**
 * __ Second Impression: __**
 * __ First Impression: __**
 * __ Second Impression: __**
 * __ An Artist's Life: __**

__ Artist's Influences: __
Peter Max had many influences in his colorful life, starting with his mom. Salla, or Peter Max's mom was a fashion designer in Berlin. By leaving various art supplies on all four balconies at their house she'd tell him "Choose any balcony and medium, make a big mess and we'll clean up after you." she'd be cultivating her son's innate talent. Another influence was Professor Honik, who showed Peter the colorful world of painting early on in life. Later in life Max's influence changed from Professor Honik to Frank Reilly, a realism painter that trained under one of the great anatomists of the 20th century, George Bridgeman. Not to mention all the painting in the museums that he studied to learn realism painting.

__ Artist's Reflection: __
The most important thing about Peter Max to me was how determined he was to learn and master his own style in painting or drawing. Going to many colleges and taking many classes and trying different styles and tools when drawing. Even going to museums after classes and studying their paintings by other famous artists. I mean Who would do that!? Peter Max would apparently! I think someone in the future wouldn't even see or know of Peter Max but if for so reason they do I think they be amazed at Peter Max's determination and at his carefree life. If there was one question that the research didn't answer, that I had a chance to ask Peter Max it would be, 'How on the face of the Earth did you not have a single problem in life?' I would ask this because the research only spoke of things Peter Max did or in Peter Max's life that was good. There was no problems written about Peter Max and his life. In my wiki one of my strongest section was my first impression of the painting called Angel with Heart because that was a painting with lots of little details a clues hidden within it. That I'd like to say I found most if not all of them. Another one of my strongest sections was the artist's background because do you see the size of that paragraph, It's granitic. That and the fact that I wrote ever little juice detail about his life down. The last of my strongest sections was the second photo I wrote about, called Sailing 2000. I believe this because again it was a bigger sized paragraph and because I was able to relate it to a thing in life that happens. One of my weaker sections was the third picture I wrote about, called Air&Space. Air&Space was one of my weakest because there wasn't much I could pull out of the painting so my paragraph ended up being short. My second weakest sections was the painting called Walking on The Moon because again I couldn't pull much out of it and because I got off topic a bit. The last weakest section of my is my Artist's Influences because it turned out to be shorter then I wanted it to be.


 * __ Sources: __ **

"Peter Max Biography." PeterMax.com, www.petermax.com/. Accessed 22 Aug. 2016.