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]

In Jerusalem, rabbis are designing a new hi-tech temple to build on Temple Mount

THE TELEGRAPH
By Jake Wallis Simons

A model of the proposed Third Temple on display at the Temple Institute

JERUSALEM---Rabbi Chaim Richman shows me into a darkened room, strokes his beard and pulls out his smartphone. There, resplendent in brilliant gold – and rather smaller than I expected – lies the Ark of the Covenant. Welcome to the Temple Institute exhibition, in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem. This is not a museum, insists Rabbi Richman, 54, the international director of the organisation. Apart from the Ark of the Covenant, every artefact on display has been painstakingly created in accordance with Biblical instructions and is intended for actual service in a “third Jewish temple", which will be built as soon as possible. Razed by the Romans, one wall of the courtyard that surrounded the temple – the Western Wall – remains and has become a focus of Jewish prayer. [More]

Archie Rand's ‘The 613’ paintings at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum

JEWISH WEEKLY
By Robert Nagler Miller

“Not to Test the Prophet,” from Archie Rand’s “The 613” series

SAN FRANSICO---Completed in 2008, [Archie Rand's] 613 20-by-16-inch canvas paintings have never been exhibited in a museum or gallery — until now. Beginning on Thursday, July 20, the works will be on display at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, where visitors will have a chance to express pleasure, confusion, annoyance, consternation, revulsion, excitement and myriad other emotions that the painter’s bold, colorful, lurid, humorous, anti-literal and completely irreverent images evoke. Talking recently about his career and the 613 project, Rand spoke of the need to develop a “visual language” within Judaism, where traditions, practices and culture have subsisted primarily on “a textual system” of written codes and interpretations. [More]

Marc Chagall, the Jewish religious artist

BLOG.OUP.COM
By MAYA BALAKIRSKY KATZ

White Crucifixion (1938) oil on canvas by Marc Chagall. Courtesy Art Institute of Chicago

One hundred thirty years after the birth of Moishe Shagall, as he was known in his small Hasidic neighborhood on the outskirts of Vitebsk, and thirty-two years after the death of Marc Chagall, as he came to be known in the modern art world, we are starting to understand his vision. Somewhere in between his life dates, Chagall became the world’s preeminent Jewish artist at a time when the Russian Jewish intelligentsia fanatically directed itself towards universalism. It is interesting, then, that Chagall’s radical religious vision has been subsumed under his cultural one in debates over his national identity, whether Jewish, French, or American. [More]

Controversial art museum in Jerusalem battles to survive

THE FORWARD
By Simone Somekh

The exhibition serves as a bridge of two worlds, one religious and the other secular that are so close and yet so apart from each other.

JERUSALEM---Located on the very edge of West Jerusalem, Museum On The Seam has been committed to presenting thought-provoking art about Israel’s complex socio-political reality since opening in 1999. Soon, the small museum with lofty aims may be forced to shutter its doors — the museum’s main backers have announced they will stop funding the institution. The museum will close down by the end of 2017 if the search for new funds fails. In the meanwhile, a temporary exhibition entitled “Thou Shalt Not,” which features works of both religious and secular Jewish artists, is on display. The aim is to spark new conversations on one of the most incendiary divides of the Israeli society across the religious/secular divide. [More]

NYC's Jewish Art Salon rockets to Teaneck

JEWISH STANDARDS
By Joanna Palmer

Joel Silverstein, "Ten Commandments - A Question." Inspired by an 1,800 year old Jewish mural, this shows Jerusalem, Moses and Aaron, drowning Egyptians, the flooding red sea and Wonder woman, mixing figurative art with pop references.

Jews and art. Art and Jews. It’s one of those weird relationships. Many Jews seem to be drawn to art. But it can be a troubled relationship nonetheless. Jewish law has prescriptions against figurative art that kept many Jews away from it for a very long time. Other questions that hover over any discussion of Jewish art also are the very basic ones: What is Jewish art? What is a Jewish artist? Do you have to be Jewish to make Jewish art? Can a Jewish artist make non-Jewish art? How about a-Jewish art? The Jewish Art Salon holds a salon to raise money toward its exhibit, “Jerusalem Between Heaven and Earth” in the Jerusalem Biennale 2017 on Monday, June 26, at 7:30 p.m. in Teaneck; call (201) 837-6157 for more information [More]

Oregon Jewish Museum Reopens With Colossal New Vision

KUOW
By Editor

A detail from "Alephbet" by Grisha Bruskin.

PORTLAND---This weekend is the big reopening for the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. Remember the space in Portland’s South Park Blocks, where the dearly departed Museum of Contemporary Craft once lived? The space is now the new home of OJMCHE. The move doubles the museum's auditorium capacity, expands the archives collection and Holocaust education programs dramatically, and sets the stage for a bigger conversation about Jewish life, identity and community. Grisha Bruskin’s “Alefbet” will be on view at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education through October. The museum’s grand opening is Sunday, June 11. [More]

Boundless: Altered Books in Contemporary Art at Hill-Stead Museum

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

Carole P. Kunstadt, Sacred Poem XI, 2015, 24 karat gold leaf, paper, thread, gampi tissue, 7.5 x 8 x1.5in

FARMINGTON, CT---In celebration of the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival’s 25th Anniversary, the historic Libraries will be transformed into a contemporary sculpture gallery to showcase Boundless: Altered Books in Contemporary Art, guest-curated by Carole Kunstadt, a graduate of the Hartford Art School. Installed among the many rare first editions and early volumes in the Pope family’s personal library, it is an exhibition of altered books by three contemporary artists: Carole P. Kunstadt, Chris Perry and Erin Walrath. Kunstadt dissects, stitches, weaves and gilds book leaves savoring the aged qualities of the paper and text while reminding one of the personal associations to knowledge and history, and the passage and compression of time.

Hill-Stead Museum: "Boundless: Altered Books in Contemporary Art" (June 16 – September 4, 2017); 35 Mountain Road, Farmington, Connecticut; 860.677.4787: hillstead.org

Moses make-over by animator Nina Paley will have you grooving

NYC RELIGIONS
By Pauline Dolle

The Seder droned on. The too-oft-repeated stories have ceased to spark the interest that they once did. Then, you get a glimpse of Nina Paley’s unique animated re-telling of the story of Moses, Seder-Masochism. Wow! Cool story, you think. Paley matches the music and lyrics of contemporary songs to her Flash animation of the traditional Jewish story. You are immersed in the experience.Paley’s Moses is stripped of the high language of scripture and the burden of divine pontification. Consequently, he becomes to the audience a real person traveling through his story. The Bible becomes sheet music for lively Mosaic riffs of music and images. Paley’s first full-length film, Sita Sings the Blues, animated the Hindu story of the Ramayana. [More]

Private art exhibition of Asaf Amario's timeless intimate moments in black, white and gold

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

Acrylic and oil painting gilded with gold leaf on panel. Part of the complete series of Mizmor L'Asaf.

LOS ANGELES----Asaf Amario, an Israeli native living in Los Angeles, is showcasing for the first time the complete series of Mizmor L'Asaf paintings in Malibu in a solo private viewing event on June 4, 2017, from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. "I grew up in Israel, and I find myself searching for those indescribable feelings I remember experiencing as a child; these paintings are my tool to capture them," Asaf Amario said. The series includes eighteen paintings, representing the Hebrew word Chai — meaning life. Placed in an unknown time and space, the images are depicted in black, white and gold. Incorporating realistic images with abstract elements highlights the rich yet modest feeling of enlightenment. [More]

Shavout and paper cutting, a forgotten Jewish folk art form

CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS
By Sara Horowitz

Jorge Jaramillo FLICKR

CANADA---When I first met the wonderful American Jewish poet Marge Piercy, she asked me about Shavuot and paper cutting. One way that Ashkenazi Jews beautified their homes for Shavuot was by creating and displaying paper cuttings. Called in Yiddish, shevuoslakh (or shavuosl) and royzalakh (or raizelach) – literally meaning little Shavuots and little roses – the paper cuttings were mounted on windows, so they would be visible both indoors and out. In Judaism, we call this hiddur mitzvah, the beautification of a commandment. [More]

Celebrate Weinberg Cherry collection of Judaica at the Museum

ARTDAILY

Tzedakah Box in Art Nouveau Style Denmark, Copenhagen, MB Mogens Ballin, 1901 Pewter H. 11.5 cm × L. 7 cm × W. 5.5 cm ROM 999.119.40.

TORONTO---The Royal Ontario Museum announced a new ROM Press publication featuring objects from the Dr. Fred Weinberg and Joy Cherry Weinberg Judaica Collection. The lavishly illustrated catalogue Judaica: The Dr. Fred Weinberg and Joy Cherry Weinberg Collection at the Royal Ontario Museum is written by ROM Curator Emeritus K. Corey Keeble. Presenting a compelling look into Jewish cultural life, the publication highlights important examples of European decorative arts, including ceramics, glass, metalwork, textiles, and works on paper, which are displayed in the Museum’s Dr. Fred Weinberg and Joy Cherry Weinberg Judaica Gallery. [More]

Jeweler Joel Arthur Rosenthal (JAR) creates his first piece of Judaica

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Vanessa Friedman

Joel Arthur Rosenthal’s menorah is shaped like the limb of a blooming almond tree, with pink enamel flowers and a central bud glowing with a pavé mix of white and gold diamonds, blue and violet sapphires, and pink rubies.

ROME, Italy---There are a number of things Joel Arthur Rosenthal, the reclusive Bronx-born, Paris-based “Fabergé of our times” more commonly known as JAR, who is also the only living jeweler to have a solo show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will not do. ...Mr. Rosenthal appeared in Rome at the opening of the first joint exhibition of the Jewish Museum of Rome and the Vatican. Titled “Menorah: Worship, History, Legend,” it includes 130 objects from the first century through … well, Mr. Rosenthal, who created his first piece of Judaica as well as the only piece of commissioned original art for the exhibition. [More]

LA gallery welcomes Isreali photographer Adi Nes for fourth show

ART AGENDA

Adi Nes, Untitled (from "The Village"), 2008. Color photograph mounted on aluminum, ed. 4/10, 100 x 125 cm

LOS ANGELES---Praz-Delavallade is honored to present the first exhibition with the gallery on the west coast of the renowned Israeli photographer Adi Nes. For his fourth show at Praz-Delavallade, a selection of various series will be unveiled. Central themes in Adi Nes's photographs deal with the issues of Israeli identity and masculinity. His works wrestle with social and political questions revolving around gender, the center versus the periphery, Eastern versus Western cultures, ethnic issues, Judaism, local myths, militarism, humanism, and social justice. [More]

Austria's Jewish Museum explores the "Female Side of God"

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

Rachel Kanter‘s “God’s Aspect” in the exhibition "The Female Side of God." Image courtesy of Jewish Art Salon

HOHENEMS, Austria---The possibility of a sexually—sometimes more, sometimes less—female-defined dimension of God flashes up in the Hebrew Bible, in extracanonical writings, and in rabbinic literature. The Jewish Museum Hohenems poses the question to the monotheistic religions: Is it possible to view the—according to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim tradition—“one and only God” as other than male? The exhibition scrutinizes ideas of the female as negative antithesis to the male, and presents Jewish and other women who have been and still keep searching for their own dimensions of the divine—also in their artistic examinations of traditional notions of God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. "The Female Side of God" opened in April, and runs through October 8, 2017.

In the age of Trump, one man reclaims the golem as a symbol of Jewish resistance

LITERARY HUB
By Nathan Goldman

Illustration from the book Golem, by David Wisniewski

On November 21, 2016, The Lead with Jake Tapper on CNN hosted a discussion on the subject of whether president-elect Donald Trump should formally disavow the so-called “alt-right,” a movement of white nationalists who have vocally supported Trump and have ties to his advisers. Richard Spencer denigrates the media by alluding to the anti-Semitic trope that it is controlled by Jews. And then there’s the golem. The golem is a figure from Jewish folklore. Its earliest roots, according to Gershom Scholem’s seminal study, “The Idea of the Golem,” lie in Psalm 139, in which golmi, a form of golem, means “unformed, amorphous,” as of Adam “before the breath of God had touched him.” By the end of the 12th century, Scholem writes, the word appears in Jewish mystical texts signifying “a man created by magical art.” [link]

Jewish Museum in Berlin explores women's head coverings

HARRATZ
By David Green

"Sheitels (that’s Yiddish for wigs)" by Ruth Schreiber at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Courtesy of the artist

BERLIN---I was waiting in the airport security line for my flight to Berlin when up ahead of me I saw what I assumed was a woman, covered head to toe, save for a slit in her veil exposing her eyes. Was she Jewish? Maybe so. But if there’s one thing I took away from “Cherchez la Femme: Wig, Burqa, Wimple,” a new exhibition I happened upon the next day at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, it’s that women can have many different reasons for covering up, some of which are a sign of empowerment, not submission – at least not to other people. “Cherchez la Femme” (on through July 2) examines the subject of women’s head coverings throughout Jewish, Muslim and Christian history, with the emphasis on current practice. [link]

Movie Review: An anti-Semite learns of his Jewish roots in ‘Keep Quiet

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Glenn Kenny

Movie poster for "Keep Quiet"

HOLLYWOOD---“You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,” says an old song about bigotry. But to hear the former far-right Hungarian politician Csanad Szegedi tell it, he was essentially a self-taught anti-Semite. In “Keep Quiet,” a documentary directed by Sam Blair and Joseph Martin, Mr. Szegedi recalls the pride he felt as a student reading far-right newspapers pushing a nationalist narrative. For his part, Mr. Szegedi disdains what he calls “cosmopolitan” Jews who insist “all Hungary gave the world was peach schnapps and baggy pants.” Then Mr. Szegedi learns an inconvenient truth: He is of Jewish lineage. His grandmother was an Auschwitz survivor. His colleagues initially suggest that this could be a good thing, inoculating the party from accusations of race hate. That strategy seems to last about half a minute, and Mr. Szegedi is expelled. He begins to embrace his Jewish identity, perhaps out of necessity. [link]

Jewish exhibit explores Israeli artists’ complex relationship with Jesus

RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
By Noga Tarnopolsky

Micha Kirshner’s “Aisha el-Kord, Khan Younis Refugee Camp,” a 1988, gelatin silver print, reminds many of the Christian pieta. Image courtesy of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem

ISREAL---At the center of the Israel Museum’s blockbuster exhibit “Behold the Man: Jesus in Israeli Art” is a life-size photograph of a woman draped in black caressing the head of a small baby asleep on her lap. Micha Kirshner’s 1988 image “Aisha El-Kord, Khan Younis Refugee Camp” may evoke the politics of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it just as powerfully conjures the pietà, or the Roman Catholic tradition of painting and sculpture in which the Virgin Mary holds the dead body of Jesus on her lap or in her arms. But while the photo may be a reference to the pictorial Christian tradition, Kirshner himself is Jewish. [link]

Hebrew University Archaeologists find 12th Dead Sea Scrolls cave

ARTDAILY

Cloth that was once used for wrapping the scrolls.

ISRAEL---Excavations in a cave on the cliffs west of Qumran, near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, prove that Dead Sea scrolls from the Second Temple period were hidden in the cave, and were looted by Bedouins in the middle of the last century. With the discovery of this cave, scholars now suggest that it should be numbered as Cave 12. The excavators are the first in over 60 years to discover a new scroll cave and to properly excavate it. Excavation of the cave revealed that at one time it contained Dead Sea scrolls. [link]