Name: Peter Max
Occupation: Artist
Residence: New York City
Why I chose this picture: I started painting the American flag, and I painted it with not the right amount of stripes; just four or five red stripes. In the area where the stars are, there are four stars. So it’s abstract. It’s symbolic. It looks like a flag, of course, but if you counted the stars you’d say, “Hey, there’re only four stars.” Because I wanted them to be larger and more painterly.
In 1981, I was invited to the White House, and somebody said, “It would be great if you presented one of those to Ronald Reagan.” So I painted one. It was four feet wide and three feet high; a big, bold flag with a lot of thick brushstrokes. When I finished painting the four starts, I painted a little heart between to the two bottom stars. The president said to me, “the heart, the heart,” kind of as a question. I said, “Mr. President, the flag with a heart is for a country with a heart.” And he loved that. There’s no country in the planet that’s got a bigger heart than we have.
We’re such a generous country, I think because of the mixture of people. You could stand on the corner of Broadway and 72nd street here in New York, and if you asked people where they’re from as they walked by, after 45 minutes you’d hear probably 100 countries. People come to New York and Washington and the United States from every country in the world. I really think we are a country with a heart.
If you go
Peter Max at Wentworth Gallery
Where: The Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, 1100 S. Hayes St., Arlington; Tysons Galleria, 1731 M. International Dr., McLean
When: Indefinite
Info: Free; 703-415-1166; 703-883-0111; www.wentworthgallery.com
