Peter Max's pop life

By GREG COOK | August 18, 2010

I STARTED PAINTING AGAIN [in the '70s] because the museums were after me. So I just started doing a lot of museum shows, a lot of serious painting.

I'M THE KIND OF PAINTER, if I got up right now, put the phone down, and I'm at the easel, the paints are uncovered, there's an empty canvas, I pick up a brush, and there's paint on the brush, right, and then as I approach the canvas with the brush, I swear to God, I don't know what I'm going to paint. I just put the paint down. I do something to it, some strokes. Then I paint some other paint and I answer it. And I answer the next thing with some other strokes. Just like a jazz musician, he puts a few moments down, right, then he answers it with a little bebop, or this or that, then he answers it with something else, bass lines, then some melody, then back to bass lines. And it's the same thing. I've learned to paint like this and draw like this. This way it's complete freedom.

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Topics: Museum And Gallery , Manhattan, Johnny Carson, Painting, More

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ARTICLES BY GREG COOK

A REALLY BIG SHOW! | May 21, 2013
This showcase of tomorrow's-art-stars-today is both invigorating and overwhelming, with work by 194 students.

CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN | May 13, 2013
What does it mean to be a man? That's the question at the heart of this smart, sumptuous exhibit — one of the best shows in the region this year.

MERRY PRANKSTERS | May 07, 2013
Parked out front of Brown University's gray modernist Granoff Center on a recent sunny morning were one of those 15-foot-tall inflatable rats that unions install in front of businesses they're protesting and a limousine sloppily painted to resemble a yellow and black school bus.

ALTERED IMAGES | April 30, 2013
Among the handsome Washington Street storefronts of AS220's renovated Mercantile Block building, with their neo-old-timey signs, is the residents' entrance to the building. It is against AS220's religion to leave any space empty that can be filled with art. So the lobby is the AS220 Resident Gallery, which occupants of the building take turns filling with their stuff.

IN THE CITY | April 23, 2013
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Providence art scene is how the city itself has been such a rich subject. A decade ago, the city became a galvanizing topic as artists fought to protect the old mills that served as their homes and studios from demolition — with mixed success. But lately, the community's industrial architecture itself has attracted artists' attention.