Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

One of my greatest Jewish art surprises of 2016 came during a tour of two provocative Archie Rand exhibitions — “Sixty Paintings from the Bible” (1992) and “The Book of Judith” (2012) — at Cleveland State University with professor and curator Samantha Baskind. It’s not that Rand was a surprise to me — you may have heard of his series of 613 canvases, one per biblical commandment. And Baskind, who edits Pennsylvania State University Press’s “Jews and the Cultural Imagination” series, may be familiar to you, too. But here I was turning a corner in the gallery with Baskind at which point I found myself face to face with Rand’s painting of Joseph trying to flee as Potiphar’s wife dramatically tugs at his red cloak. “F—k me,” the speech bubble states. That’s not quite how the biblical text reads, but to Rand’s eye, it might as well. Where this exhibit drew upon centuries-old biblical drawings, which Rand treated with a bolder and more modern palette and drawing style, the Judith series draws upon classic pin-ups. Both decisions shed considerable light rather than detract from or disrespect the religious texts they portray.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.