Peter Max, who presumably made art protesting the Vietnam war during his cosmic 60’s hippy days, clearly found alternate paths to self-actualization, paths which lead to becoming The Official Artist for any and every sense-free bureaucracy he could find.
With all the service he’s given the Federal Government–including the INS and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission–perhaps he was under the impression that he didn’t need to pay income taxes on that $1.1 million. [And when you realize Max’s sentence was teaching art to schoolchildren, you wonder who really paid for his crimes: the artist or the kids?]
Anyway, now that that pesky expert jury has disbanded, the talent-blind administrators of the Pentagon Memorial project got back to business as usual, namely, commissioning an Official Piece Of Crap from Peter Max. According to the WashPost, the Peter Max Pentagon Memorial Fundraising Poster will be available for sale at http://www.att.com/mil [Q: Isn’t that page’s title, “AT&T Military Headquarters,” exactly what Ike warned us about?], which is unusual, since Max’s most widely distributed recent work was the cover of a Verizon phone book.
The most annoying thing: At one time, the Military Industrial Complex did produce some amazing art.
[thanks, Tyler, for just ruining my day]
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the making of, by greg allen