Archie Rand's colossal painting project gets museum debut and first appearance outside of New York City

ARTDAILY
Archie Rand, To Love Converts. (Deuteronomy 10:19), part of The 613, 2001–06, serial painting composed of 613 panels, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 in. each. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Mary Faith O’Neill. The 613 by Archie Rand. On view July 20–October 22, 2017 at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco.
SAN FRANCISCO---Starting in 2001, Archie Rand (b. 1949), a painter and muralist from Brooklyn, New York, spent five years creating The 613, a monumental installation of 613 twenty by sixteen-inch canvas paintings (plus one additional title painting) arranged in a huge grid comprising 1700 square feet. The massive work reflects on the 613 requirements (mitzvot in Hebrew) for a Jewish person to live a righteous life, as synthesized from various sources in the Hebrew Bible—all rendered in a style described by Peter Steinfels of The New York Times as, “comics and pulp fiction book jackets, a dash of Mad Magazine, a spoonful of Tales from the Crypt, some grotesques, some superheroes, always action, emotion, drama.” [More]