Archie Rand (born 1949) is an American artist from Brooklyn, New York, United States.
Education and career Born in Brooklyn, Rand received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in cinegraphics from the Pratt Institute, having studied previously at the Art Students League of New York.Wecker, Menachem. "'Beyond Insane' Biblical Paintings", The Forward, June 9, 2006.Ashbery, John. "A Joyful Noise", New York, June 5, 1978.
His first exhibition was in 1966, at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York. He has since had over 100 solo exhibitions, and his work has been included in over 200 group exhibitions.Trimmel, Suzanne. "New York Galleries Exhibit Painter Archie Rand's Collaborations with Poets", Columbia News, May 1, 2002.
He is currently Presidential Professor of Art at Brooklyn College"Prominent Brooklyn Artist Archie Rand Joins Brooklyn College as Presidential Professor", Brooklyn College. which granted him the Award for Excellence in Creative Achievement in 2016. Before joining Brooklyn College, Rand was the chair of the Department of Visual Arts at Columbia University.Cohen, Davina, (photo) "Chair of the Visual Arts Department Archie Rand addressed protesters and discussed his experiences with censorship at Friday's rally at the Brooklyn Museum's "Sensation" Exhibit. Columbia Daily Spectator, October 4, 1999. He had served as the Acting Director of the Hoffberger School of Painting and as Assistant Director of the Mount Royal Graduate Programs, both at the Maryland Institute College of Art.Price, Barbara, "M.I.C.A. Newsletter", Fall 1992. From 1992–1994 he was appointed Co-Chair of the National Studio Arts Program of the College Art AssociationNewsletter of the College Art Association, May/June, 1992. Dixon, Terence A., & Nancy Adelson, VLA Press Release, "Brooklyn Union Gas Co. Censors World-Renowned Artist: Artist Files Suit Over "Offensive" Artwork", December 23, 1993. and from 1998–2003 he served as Chair of the College Art Association National Committee for the Distinguished Teaching of Art Award.Gordon, John, "Award for Distinguished Teaching of Art", CAA Convocation", Feb. 1999. Hollander, Kate, "Archie Rand", CAA News, Spring, 1999.
The Italian Academy For Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University presented him with The Siena Prize in 1995.Brilliant, Richard, "Enclosures and Openings", Casa Italiana, The Italian Academy For Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, April, 1997. He was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Foundation Fellowship in 1999 and was made a Laureate of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, which awarded him the Achievement Medal for Contributions in the Visual Arts.McBee, Richard. "The Painted Shul: Archie Rand and the B'nai Yosef Murals Part 1" , The Jewish Press, April 8, 2002. In 2002 he received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching from Columbia University."Five Columbia Professors Receive Presidential Awards for Excellence in Teaching", Columbia News, June, 2002.
Also in 2002 he became the artistic advisor to film director Ang Lee for his production of The Hulk,Morrissette, Micaela. "Heavenly Days: An Interview With Archie Rand" Rain Taxi Review Of Books www.raintaxi.com/ashbery/morrissetterand.shtml and was asked by Milestone Films to provide a commentary track for the DVD release of Henri-Georges Clouzot's classic 1955 film The Mystery of Picasso.Morris, Colin. "Archie Rand Chosen to Narrate Reissue of Classic Documentary, The Mystery of Picasso", The Columbia Record, March 28, 2003.
Following the inaugural selection of novelist Amos Oz, Rand, in 2020, became the second recipient of the $100,000 Farash Fellowship, awarded by the Farash Foundation for the Advancement of Jewish Humanities and Culture "in honor of an extraordinary luminary who exemplifies excellence and is celebrated for accomplishments in the field of Jewish humanities and culture." In 2023, Rand's serial work, "The Seventeen: Iron Flock", was selected as the American representative to the Jerusalem Biennale.Verwer, Yona, “Jerusalem Bienniale in New York”, Jewish Art Salon Newsletter, November 6, 2023; Gergely, Julia, “With the Jerusalem Biennale canceled due to war, participating artists mount 3 exhibits in New York”, NY Jewish Week, November 8, 2023; Davis, Barry, “This year’s Jerusalem Biennale finds a temporary home abroad”, The Jerusalem Post, November 13, 2023; Gergely, Julia, “Jerusalem Biennale come to NYC”, Jewish Standard, November 22, 2023; Karra, Yulia, “Jerusalem Biennale Embarks on World Tour Amid War”, Israel 21c, December 3, 2023.
Work Early works Archie Rand's earliest major works are "The Letter Paintings" (or "The Jazz Paintings") (1968–71), a radically positioned series of technically inventive, mural-sized canvases. The Letter Paintings, by incorporating the names of mainly male and female African-American musicians, undermined prevailing aesthetic categories by conflating many contemporary movements including Conceptual Art, Color Field, Pattern and Decoration, diary entry and social commentary.Lane, John R. "Archie Rand: The Consistency of Choice", Arts, November 1979; Kleeblatt, Norman L. Too Jewish? Challenging Traditional Identities (catalog), The Jewish Museum, New York and Rutgers University Press, 1996; Westfall, Stephen. "Archie Rand at Exit Art", Art in America, October, 1991.
Although The Letter Paintings had been displayed individually, they were first shown as a unit in an exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 1983. Selections from The Letter Paintings have been on continuing multi-venue exhibition tours of the United States and Europe (including Palazzo Ducale, Genoa) since their Exit Art exhibition in 1991. Roberta Smith, art critic for The New York Times and a lecturer on contemporary art, described them as "exhilarating, precocious and lyric" and wrote that "Rand's paintings demand a substantial place in the history of an unusually fertile period in American art."Smith, Roberta. "The Young Archie Rand, Reverent and Irreverent", The New York Times, April 12, 1991. Others described them as "an uncannily accurate step in the right direction","Archie Rand is an artist of great energy and enthusiasm ... if something arouses his interest it gets put in his art ... starting when he was seventeen years old Rand produced a body of paintings, known as the Letter Paintings ... Looking at them now we can see that the Letter Paintings were an uncannily accurate step in the right direction." Richard Kalina,"Archie Rand: Exit Art", Tema Celeste, Autumn, 1991. "[a]s exhilarating as a Charlie Parker solo or a holler from Big Joe Turner","As exhilarating as a Charlie Parker solo or a holler from Big Joe Turner, it made one feel like shouting, at the top of one's voice: 'Archie Rand Archie Rand'." Rubinstein, Meyer Raphael. "Archie Rand", Arts, October, 1991. and, almost thirty years after they had been painted, as carrying "the force of a visionary project"."Almost thirty years after they were painted the Letter Paintings carry the force of a visionary project. Which points to the way history always works: innovations require innovators." Jeff Lipschutz, Archie Rand: The Letter Paintings (catalog), The Allen Priebe Gallery, The University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, September, 1997.
The New York Times called Rand's first solo exhibition of abstract collaged canvases "An impressive debut".Kramer, Hilton, "Archie Rand", The New York Times, December 2, 1972
In 1974 Rand received a commission from Congregation B'nai Yosef in Brooklyn. Rand was asked to paint thematic murals on the complete interior surfaces of the synagogue. The work took three years, and completing this commission made Rand the author of the only narratively painted synagogue in the world and the only one we know of since the 2nd Century Dura-Europos. The religious legal controversy raised by placing wall paintings in a traditionally iconoclastic space was resolved by the verdict of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, then considered to be the world's leading Talmudic scholar, who declared the paintings to be in conformity with the law.
The murals were received with great enthusiasm: according to John Ashbery,
So varied and intricate are the themes Rand has treated in his murals and so multifaceted the barrage of styles he has employed, that it is difficult to describe the murals. They demand to be viewed. The sweep and eclecticism add up to a startling wholeness. The courage to be hybrid is given to relatively few artists; it was required here and Rand supplied it. The work surrounds one in an environment of wonder, of spirituality and earthiness, of joy and terror, but mostly joy. It attempts to be as diverse as Creation itself and just about succeeds.
Others were equally laudatory, describing the murals as "exciting and exceptional""The Rabbis have dared to permit a Jewish artist to decorate a new synagogue in New York with exciting and exceptional murals that bear witness to the changing attitudes of the religious establishment towards art." Alice Blitental, "The Synagogue (Murals) of Archie (Rand)", Maariv, January 22, 1982. and "a remarkably impressive achievement" and "energetic tour-de-force"."Rand's own moral and artistic judgment resulted in a remarkably impressive achievement. The inspired intensity of his drive led him to employ three styles of approach: ... Archie Rand's energetic tour-de-force, by its variety, allows members of the congregation who respond differently to visual stimuli the freedom of either enjoying the representational, the abstract or the symbolic." John Arthur Shanks, "In the Shadow of God", Midstream, January, 1980. The synagogue itself became known as "The Painted Shul". Director Amala Lane's 45 minute film, titled The Painted Shul, documenting the B'nai Yosef Murals, was released in 2003.Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine:
As Matthew Baigell has recently written, "The B'Nai Yosef murals, then, when considered in the light of ... his mixture of figurative and abstract elements; his appeal to the viewer's imagination and awareness of the artist's sense of inventiveness, are, altogether, nothing less than revolutionary in Jewish American art ... After these murals, anything became possible for Jewish-American artists."Baigell, Matthew. "Archie Rand: American Artist With A Judaic Turn" Images 3:1 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009, 57-79. The aesthetic demands of the B'Nai Yosef murals marked a turning point in Rand's work. His subsequent turn to figuration may have been influenced by his friendship with Philip Guston, whose own work was transformed in the late 1960s. Like Guston, Rand "chafed at the limitations of purely abstract forms."
Robin Cembalest, reviewing Rand's work in The Forward in 1994, noted that:
Until a few years ago, Mr. Rand essentially had two parallel and – for the most part – distinct careers in the art world. In the contemporary arena he is known primarily as an abstractionist, a near-cult figure who started out as a child prodigy and whose admirers range from John Ashbery to Julian Schnabel. In the Jewish world he is a maverick muralist who paints scenes from the Bible in Orthodox synagogues.Cembalest, Robin. "Taking an Air Gun to the Eyes of Jesus", The Forward, May 6, 1994.
Since then Rand, whose paintings range considerably in style and scale, has been seen as a respected and unclassifiable figure in the art world: