Archie Rand’s 613 in NY Times & Wall Street Journal

Archie Rand has received a lot of press reviews with the publication of his book The 613. Here are  highlights, including a television show:

On Michael Stoler’s CUNY – TV show, “Building New York”, there will be two consecutive weeks of interviews with painter Archie Rand.

In addition:

Do This, Don’t Do That – Lots of people try to live by the Ten Commandments. Only the Jews have to cope with 613.

Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2015

….. Archie Rand doesn’t feel commanded in quite this way. After a precocious debut on the New York art scene, he was commissioned in 1974 to cover the inside of a Brooklyn synagogue with murals, a project that sparked a lifelong interest in making art that is palpably Jewish. Decades of reading, thinking and painting followed. Avoiding flying rabbis and pigmented schmaltz, Mr. Rand has said (as quoted by the Religion News Service): “I don’t want to make paintings that were about Jewishness, but that are Jewish.”

Full article by Daniel Akst here.

CUNY – TV can be seen in New York’s 5 boroughs on Ch. 75 (Time Warner and Cablevision/Optimum Brooklyn), Ch. 77 (RCN) and Ch. 30 (Verizon) and in the tri-state area on broadcast tv channel 25.3.
The show is accessible on the CUNY – TV website: www.cuny.tv  and on You/Tube.

Airing  –  SHOW 1  – Building NY: NY Stories –  Archie Rand (taped 10/17/11)

The first week’s show, starting on December 7, 2015, will be a re-broadcast of Stoler’s initial conversations, where some of Rand’s early works and experiences are investigated.
December 7, 10:30am, 4:30pm, 10:30pm; December 10, 11:30pm; December 12, 12noon; December 13, 12:30am, 6pm

Airing   –  SHOW 2 – Building NY: NY Stories – Archie Rand (taped 11/12/15).

The second week’s programming, starting December 14, 2015, will feature a new interview that focuses on the background story of Rand’s best selling new book “The 613”, a book which includes startling, full page color plates of the 613 panels that combine to form his extraordinary painting.
December 14, 10:30am, 4:30pm, 10:30pm; December 17, 11:30pm; December 19, 12noon; December 20, 12:30am, 6pm

NY Times article:

An Illustrated Guide to the 613 Jewish Commandments

New York Times, October 30, 2015

“The painter Archie Rand likes to work big. He tackles big themes, like jazz in American culture and the history of the Jews. He often paints very large pieces, including murals. And he likes to work in expansive series, like his collection of 54 paintings, one for each parashah, or division, in the Hebrew text of the Torah.

But nothing prepared the art world for “The 613,” his series, completed in 2008, of 613 paintings, one for each Jewish commandment.

Seven years ago, when The New York Times wrote about “The 613,” the paintings were hanging in Mr. Rand’s warehouse in Brooklyn. No gallery or museum has shown them all. To do that, Mr. Rand had to put the paintings between the covers of a book. “The 613,” a wonderfully garish book with one painting per page, will be published next week (Blue Rider, $45).

Full article by Mark Oppenheimer here.