By Patricia Frischer
If you, or the
kid in you, is a fan of “comix,” you’ll be a fan of The 613, a collection in
which painter Archie Rand
illustrates each of the Torah’s 613 commandments. All done in a wild style the
New York Times calls a “mash-up of comic books, True Detective magazine covers
and obsessive-compulsive disorder… like Marc Chagall on a bender,” each panel
in The 613 is stunning, truly unique work of art. Meet the artist for a Bagels
& Books event on Wedn. Nov 2 from 10 to 11:30 and a virtual and
very visual guided tour of one of the most singular works of Jewish art ever
made. Center for Jewish Culture, TEMPLE
SOLEL 3575 Manchester Avenue,
Cardiff by the Sea, CAS 92007.
More info: Leigh Haubach 858-362-1148.
When a book illustrator
starts a lecture talking about Clement Greenburg, one of the most prominent art
critics of modern art, your ears perks. It turns out that Archie Rand is the creator
of the pictures for the book The
613. The 613 took five years to complete and is indeed an
illustration of the 613 mitzvahs that are like the Jewish commandments. But Archie Rand’s journey is not just one of
an illustrator.
Rand is a very entertaining speaker. He combines art philosophy
with stories of his life in New York in the
early 70s in beer joints like Max's Kansas
City. This was
before the MFA was invented in our art schools and artists were a wild bunch of
anti establishment figures. Rand was a young
Jewish abstract painter trying to find his way in the world of art galleries,
looking to join the ranks of the famous. Many artist were Jewish, but none used
Jewish motifs in their work.
Rand’s view was that Jews were trying hard to assimilate
and art was a way to fit into American culture. Universalism was a popular
concept where religion was considered a human quality. Judaism was a religion,
but Jewishness is a culture. So you could stay Jewish and be an artist as long
as you did not make religious art. But
when Rand was commissioned to make art for
synagogues, he had to be careful to be obedient to the rabbinical precepts.
The main communication of
Jews is text not visual. Services are about conversation, even argument. So Rand started looking at the nouns that would give him
clues to how to paint objects acceptable as art in synagogues. He had to work figuratively
and as his work was religious, he was cast out by his former artists drinking
buddies. Actually, as an aside, it turns out that Mary Boone moved her stable
of artists out of the cheap joints and into more expensive restaurants, so
instead of a $1 beer, that crowd had to pony up for $100 lunches. The whole
scene was changing, and Rand found that he
identified more with the graphic novel (comic book) artist of the time. We
found out at this lecture that the artists from Mad Magazine were actually mostly Jewish.
Rand was able to tread the delicate line with the
synagogues and has built a relation with them all over the world. He developed a theory that if the visual was the primary means of communication and the text was secondary, the combination would be winning. But first he
was challenged by rabbis and congregations who objected his use of animals and
black backgrounds. He also has continued to make non-secular work. Some of his
work looks like it was influenced by R, B Kitag, an artist who Rand knew, but I see all sorts of other influences as
well, like Raoul Dufy.
The book The 613 is
reproductions of all the pictures in this one series. When displayed it fills a
space 18 by 100 feet. It has been shown once in a warehouse in Brooklyn for 4
hours and had 1000 visitors, but it will be shown next year in San Francisco at the Jewish Museum. Rand is a prolific artist who has spent his life working in a field he has pioneered.
With this book on the New York Times top selling list for 30 weeks, he might
finally have broken through to a larger audience.
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| Comparison with a typical RB Kitaj work of art |
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| Archie Rand |
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| Comparison with a Raoul Dufy |
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| Artist with The 619 |
BIO: Archie
Rand is an artist from Brooklyn,
New York, born in 1949. Rand's work as a painter and muralist is
displayed around the world, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art
Institute of Chicago, the Victoria and Albert Museum
in London, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
in Paris, and
the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. There have been over 100 solo exhibitions of his
work. He has also published collaborative work with poets Robert Creeley, John
Ashbery, Clark Coolidge, David Plante John Yau, David Lehman and Jim Cummins.
He was awarded, among numerous honors, the Achievement Medal For Contributions
to the Visual Arts by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and he
received the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Formerly the Chair of the
Department of Visual Arts at Columbia University, he is currently the Presidential
Professor of Art at Brooklyn
College, CUNY. His home
and studio are located in Brooklyn.
