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Peter Max, whose colorful, psychedelic pop art expressed the optimism of the “flower power” movement of the 1960s and graced everything from postage stamps to a cruise ship, has died, his son said in a written statement Wednesday. He was 88.

Max died on Monday, the statement said. No cause was given, but he had been suffering from advanced dementia.

Max began his career in graphic design in the 1960s, and his swirly, colorful, instantly recognizable designs epitomized the era’s “flower power” art. But thanks to his prolific output and fun, accessible style, Max’s work remained popular well into the 21st century.

Max was the official artist for the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the Indianapolis 500, the World Cup, the World Series and many other events. His art appeared on a Boeing 777 airplane and a Norwegian Cruise Line ship. His portrait subjects ranged from U.S. presidents to Taylor Swift.

But in his first flush of success in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his murallike tableaus of flowers, the cosmos and cartoonish figures — all in vivid colors like turquoise, orange and neon green — seemed to be everywhere. Dorm room walls were plastered with his posters. Household furnishings like clocks and bedspreads sported his designs.

He even created covers for the Manhattan Yellow Pages, a business phone directory distributed to millions of people. Max himself was featured on the cover of Life magazine in 1969, his trademark dark, bushy mustache framing a hearty grin.

“We will remember his extraordinary creativity, his warmth, his curiosity, and the way he saw beauty and possibility everywhere,” his son Adam Max said in the statement announcing the death. “His art became part of American culture, but the man behind that art — the father we knew and loved — is the person we will miss most.”

Family Fled Nazi Germany

Max was born Peter Max Finkelstein in 1937 to a Jewish family in Berlin. They fled Nazi Germany for Shanghai when he was a baby and later spent time in Tibet, Israel and Paris before settling in New York City when Max was 16. By then, he said in an interview, he was already “a huge fan of American culture”: comics, movies and “all the jazz music.”

Max studied in New York at the Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute. In 1961, he opened a graphic design studio with friends. His bold, unique style was an immediate hit with ad agencies, publications, the corporate world and in pop culture.

That led to a booming commercial business. “My work was really, I would say, almost exploited,” he said. “It was on mugs, it was on bedsheets, it was on dresses, it was on silks and scarves and ties — 70 product lines.”

But what “bothered” him about all that success, he said, was that he “wasn’t painting anymore.” So he shut the business down for a time in the early 1970s to reconnect with his art. One of his biggest projects after returning to public life was a series of portraits of the Statue of Liberty, painted at the White House at the invitation of First Lady Nancy Reagan in 1981.

Max weathered various controversies in his personal and professional life. He pleaded guilty to tax fraud in 1997 after the IRS alleged he concealed more than $1 million in income from his art. He was originally sentenced to two months in prison but ultimately was allowed instead to serve the time in a work-release program, pay the back taxes and a $30,000 fine, and perform 800 hours of community service teaching art in Harlem schools.

In 2015, his family life became tabloid fodder in a back-and-forth between his second wife, Mary Max, and Adam, his son from a previous marriage. The son and a guardian alleged that Mary Max had depleted his finances and browbeat him. She in turn claimed that they had kept him from her against his will and stolen paintings that belonged to her. Accounts of court appearances described him as frail.

In 2019, Mary Max died by suicide two weeks after The New York Times published a story detailing legal battles over his work.

His Art Had a Bright, Happy Vibe

Those dark allegations contrasted with the relentlessly bright, happy vibe that infused his work. “The colors are strong, sometimes loud, sometimes raw and sometimes harmonious, but always powerful, and the images are always on the side of the peaceful nature,” he said. “I don’t discuss in my paintings negative things, I don’t dwell on it in my mind and don’t dwell on it in my canvasses.”

In another interview, he summed it up like this: “I see everything through rainbow eyes.”

Although accounts of Max’s career sometimes lament that he was not taken seriously by the art establishment, in fact his work has been featured in dozens of museum exhibitions around the world. New York’s Museum of Modern Art owns seven of his works.

The art for the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” is sometimes mistakenly attributed to Max, but the design for the album cover and “Yellow Submarine” movie are officially credited to the late Heinz Edelmann. Max claimed in a 2012 interview he did the original “Yellow Submarine” design before handing it off to Edelmann. But the website for New York’s Park West gallery, a longtime dealer of Max’s art, described Max’s involvement in “Yellow Submarine” as “early consulting work.”

Max was, however, friends with the Beatles and many other celebrities. He also had a deep interest in Eastern spirituality. He brought “Swami” Satchidananda Saraswati to the U.S., and helped him popularize yoga here.

Max’s first marriage to Elizabeth Nance ended in divorce. In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Libra Astro.

South Park, one of the longest-running comedy series on television, returned to Comedy Central for its 29th season after making the unexpected move of changing the show’s name to “South America” — a gag that creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone announced as a possible marketing gimmick but is certainly also a jab at President Donald Trump. Wednesday night’s season premiere provided little explanation as to when and why the name change happened for the fictional Colorado town, but it does offer a vague metaphor for current U.S. politics around immigration.

Seasons 27 and 28 of South Park had shifted from the show’s traditional stand-alone episodes to a season-long arc centered on fictionalized happenings within the White House, including President Trump’s clandestine affair with Satan. With the premiere, the show appears to be returning to its traditional format — stand-alone episodes that may still carry overarching themes. It’s not entirely clear whether we’ve seen the last of South Park‘s satirical Trump character and the supporting cast of cabinet officials, hangers-on and vice-president-turned-lover J.D. Vance, but they’re absent from this one-off episode, which stays within the confines of the titular town.

“Inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google, we are changing the name of ‘South Park’ to ‘SOUTH AMERICA,’” Parker and Stone said in a Sept. 8 statement announcing the name change. One might have expected the season premiere to show Trump signing an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” before eventually getting to South Park. Instead, the season begins after the name change has already been accepted — essentially baking the joke into the show, as characters refer to their town as “South America” without question. Only once does a character allude to the name change itself, and it’s clear the moment was divisive for the town.

What the episode offers is a straightforward plot that, as usual, hides a metaphor for a social issue beneath dialogue soaked in double entendres. It begins with Eric Cartman faking being bullied at school to trick his mother into buying him an e-bike — a vehicle clearly designed for adults that has become the one thing every kid in town must have. Ever the earnest pushover, Liane Cartman complies, and soon the boy is terrorizing the town on his new, dangerous ride. Eventually, more of the town’s children are wreaking havoc around South America, crashing through diner windows and scaring pedestrians — a clear metaphor for groups of immigrants moving into American towns.

Early in the episode, Kyle tries his own version of Cartman’s ploy on his mother, but he has to go through his father, Randy, who arrives home in flashy spandex and sneakers, now a 10-speed cyclist commuting in the bike lane that’s being overtaken by kids on e-bikes. Randy soon forms a gang of 10-speed riders that begins roughing up anyone in their way. They’re not especially fast, though — one motorist bemoans the “old farts” blocking the road. Still, the gang feels like a stand-in for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they comb the town trying to eradicate the e-bike kids.

As the kids’ South American youth biker gang is hunted by Randy’s gang of adults, the episode piles on satire aimed at the companies and public figures who have fallen in line as Trump took a marker to traditional maps. Google is repeatedly used to search things like “how to get the laws changed in South America?” (the answer: bribing government officials) and “how can police respond to gang violence in South America?” (the answer: extreme violence).

The episode also spoofs the massive cultural anticipation ahead of the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, the video game sequel slated to arrive in stores in November — making it a natural stand-in for the upcoming midterm elections, which “the libs” of Trump’s America are looking to for drastic change. “Hopefully, things will get better in November. That’s when Grand Theft Auto Six comes out,” one character says. Someone has to do something — we need to get these kids off the streets and back inside on their phones.

Parker and Stone have packed these metaphors into the premiere, a style that marks a clear departure from last season’s grotesque White House storylines. The question now is whether they plan to run this metaphor across the season and carry on with the e-bikes plot or if they will bring a new issue into the foreground and subject it to their now more subtle satire.