The artistic evolution of Peter Max

Iconic painter shaped one of the most distinctive styles in modern popular culture. He visits Laguna Beach today.Even if you don’t know who he is, you know his work.

Its vibrant, Day-Glo colors and swirling bold lines have been on album covers, magazines, book jackets, countless posters and even on the first 10-cent stamp.

He’s painted for five presidents and six Super Bowls.

A survey of artist and designer Peter Max’s career is like looking at a pop biography of what it means to be an American.

And he wasn’t even born in this country.

Max is visiting Laguna Beach today to showcase his latest project, the official poster for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. It is the latest in a long line of vivid graphic images that Max has been turning out since the early 1960s. That certain psychedelic look that marks his style defined an era, and its universal appeal has meant Max has been there to illustrate a lot of our social moments.

“Culture has a certain velocity,” Max said, “and I’m very culturally in tune.”

Although Max was born in Berlin, Germany, he was raised in China. How he came to be so “in tune” with American culture is a study in serendipity. When he was a young boy in China, he begged his father to buy four huge bags of what turned out to be American comic books.

“We got them home and my father spread them out on a huge table,” Max recalled lovingly.

“Over 150 of all the greats. You know, Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman.”

Not long after, he found a radio station that played only American bebop and jazz. Then his best friend’s father opened a movie theater where Max would go to watch all the latest American films. “I’d watch them all at least 12 times.”

Essentially, Max got a highly distilled version of American popular culture as his early education.

“When I was 16, I knew more about American iconography than most people do today,” Max said.

Laura Clifton of Wentworth Gallery, which has a store in Laguna, describes Max’s work in some of the most simple but sweeping terms imaginable.

“His work represents a whole era,” she said. “Peter Max is an icon.”

So Max’s work went from an expression of popular culture to icon status in and of itself. It was Max’s art nouveau-inspired portraits of the Beatles that figured in the movie “Yellow Submarine.”

His trippy, kaleidoscopic designs are found in the most popular of pop culture moments. There are posters for Woodstock, the bicentennial celebration, the fall of the Berlin Wall and now the Olympics.

His multicolored images have gone from groundbreaking status to becoming part of America’s visual vocabulary.

“America,” Max says, “is the content-maker for the planet.” And Max himself has a mission for that content.

Max believes that the social awareness and activism of the 1960s is making a resurgence. He sees a new consciousness to purchasing habits in this millennium.

“Everything the consumer buys can be done with awareness -- organic, safe for the environment,” he said.

He works prolifically for charities, with his studio putting out more than 1,200 individual works a year to “just about any cause that doesn’t conflict” with his belief in animal rights or environmentalism.

“It’s important to do,” Max said simply.

There’s no denying the distinct optimism and unabashed patriotism in Max’s work. To some of his older fans, his work has a kind of sentimental appeal.

“It’s nostalgic -- it speaks to a certain age group of their own history, not like a Picasso that speaks to the distant past,” Clifton said.

When asked if he sees his art heading in a certain direction, Max replied that he “gets up every morning” and looks at what he did the day before and sees that “there have been nice changes.”

“I see an evolution, but I don’t try to make it happen,” he added. “If it’s fun, then it’s creative. It just works out that way.”

Max, who visits California often, paused for a minute to reflect on Laguna Beach.

“If I had a West Coast studio,” he said, “it would be in Laguna. It’s a good place for one. Maybe I’ll look into that.”

Max will be making personal appearances from 6 to 9 p.m. today at the Laguna Beach Wentworth Gallery at 305 Forest Ave. and from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday at the Fashion Island Wentworth Gallery.

“People love to meet him,” Clifton said. “He often writes little dedications on back [of the work he’s signing], sometimes adds drawings and caricatures.”

In addition to featuring Max’s new poster, both Wentworth locations will have a kind of mini-retrospective of Max’s work on view through the weekend titled “Colors of a Better World,” which will include both past and present paintings, prints and drawings.

A smaller display of Max’s work is ongoing at both locations.Poster for 2006 Winter Olympics.20051104ipcrkxknNo Caption20051104ipcrflkn(LA)Poster for 2006 Winter Olympics.