American Pie is an original Pop Art painting by Juan Mira.

Art, at its best, plays with perception. It invites the viewer to step closer, to inspect and interpret. Juan Mira’s American Pie offers just that—a visual experience that surprises and provokes thought. Inspired by Peter Max’s Flag with Heart from 1988, Mira takes the familiar symbols of patriotism and Pop Art into a fresh, creative direction, blending technical skill with thematic depth.

The Illusion of the Frame

One of the most striking features of Peter Max’s Flag with Heart is its unconventional frame. Max blurs the boundary between painting and presentation, using vivid colors and bold strokes to incorporate the frame into the artwork itself, as if it’s just another part of the canvas.

Juan Mira flips this concept in American Pie. Instead of painting within an actual frame as in Max’s piece, Mira creates the illusion of one. The entire painting is executed on a flat canvas, yet a trompe-l’œil (French for “deceive the eye”) effect conjures a three-dimensional wooden frame. This faux frame isn’t merely a nod to Max’s design—it’s a reimagining of it.

The work invites us to question boundaries between the real and the painted, between surface and structure. At first glance, American Pie appears housed in a traditional frame; closer inspection reveals the ruse, extended even onto the canvas edges so the sides visually “blend” with the frame on the front. Subtle touches—like the painted signs of aging on the “wood”—add a note of nostalgia, as though the piece has already lived a long life.

Pop Art with a Deeper Slice

The title American Pie carries its own cultural weight. The phrase “as American as apple pie” symbolizes something quintessentially American—comfort, nostalgia, and instant recognition. Mira channels that with a bright Pop Art palette and a crisp depiction of a slice of apple pie.

But the pie is also metaphor. It becomes a shorthand for the idea that “everyone gets a slice”—equity, opportunity, the shared dream of prosperity. Apples, too, carry long-standing symbolic meanings: love, temptation, health, knowledge. By combining these elements with the flag’s bold imagery, Mira moves from patriotic iconography to social reflection: Who gets a piece of the pie, and what does that pie represent today?

Versatile Presentation

Because the illusion is so convincing, American Pie can be displayed in an actual frame—or hung as-is. Wall pads and wire allow it to read as an unframed work that appears framed, giving curators and collectors room to play with viewer expectations.

A New Chapter in Pop Art

By weaving classic American symbols—the flag, the apple, the slice of pie—through a Peter Max–inspired lens, Juan Mira writes his own chapter in Pop Art. The meticulous trompe-l’œil “frame,” the witty symbolism, and the cultural commentary fuse into a work that delights at a distance and rewards close looking. American Pie is both celebration and critique, spectacle and sleight of hand—an irresistible slice of contemporary Pop Art.