There's many ways to praise the Lord, but Sister Mary Corita Kent's was definitely unusual. Kent was indeed an artist, educator and activist, but also one of the few women who led the Pop Art movement revolutionising silk screening and type design, producing thousands of posters, murals, and other works that combined faith and politics. A recently opened show at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh currently celebrates her.
Entitled "Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent" (until 19th April) and organised in collaboration with the Corita Art Center, in Los Angeles, a gallery and archive dedicated to preserving and promoting her work, this is the first full-scale survey focusing on the work of this American artist.
There have actually been other exhibitions about Kent's works, but they focused on specific periods of time in her career. This event covers instead more than 30 years and includes early abstractions and text pieces, as well as the more lyrical works made in the 1970s and 1980s, plus rarely shown photographs Corita used for teaching and documentary purposes.
Born Frances Elizabeth Kent in 1918, she entered the Roman Catholic order of Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles in 1936, taking the name Sister Mary Corita. Kent earned her BA from Immaculate Heart College in 1941 and her MA in Art History at the University of Southern California in 1951.
Working from the late '30s in the Immaculate Heart of Mary Community, she taught from 1947 through 1968 at the Immaculate Heart College leading its Art Department. The latter became actually well-known among artists and creative minds and famous visitors included Alfred Hitchcock, John Cage, Buckminster Fuller and Charles & Ray Eames.
Kent resigned from the college and left the order in 1968, abandoning the formal practices of Roman Catholicism and moving to Boston, where she devoted herself to watercolour paintings and worked on printmaking when commissioned.
Before she died in 1986, she designed the 1984 anti-nuclear billboard campaign for Physicians for Social Responsibility and the "Love" stamp (1985 View this photo) for the US Postal Service, that eventually became the best selling stamp of all times.
Her work appeared on book jackets, stationery, posters, magazines such as the Time and Newsweek, and even gas tanks, and entered several museum collections including The Whitney, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Many exhibitions have been dedicated to her throughout the years but "Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent" is particularly intriguing since, as stated, focuses on her entire career, rather than on a specific period of time, though the '60s remain a pivotal decade in Kent's life.
Kent was already into printmaking when she saw Warhol's first Campbell’s Soup show in Los Angeles in 1962, but it was around that time that she decided to introduce popular culture into her works.
From then on her Pop-inspired prints in vibrant colours posed philosophical questions about racism, war and poverty that she mixed with religious symbols and messages.
Colour, form and the written word became the main principles behind her prints: Kent combined bright and bold imagery with texts sampled from religious sources like the scriptures, or street and grocery store signs, newspaper clipping, advertisings, logos and lettering from commercial products and brands representing American consumerism like General Mills and Del Monte, pop song lyrics and writings by Gertrude Stein, E. E. Cummings, and Albert Camus.
The artist and teacher also prompted her students (whose art was often included with her own in exhibitions) to experience the world, observe it and get inspired by everyday places and objects.
Quite often her provocative work (such as the tomato serigraph reading "Mary Mother, the juciest [sic] tomato of them all") was the cause of conflict with conservative exponents of the Catholic church like Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angeles.
The exhibition at the Warhol Museum also includes a programme of events revolving around Corita Kent: in March Ori Soltes from Georgetown University will present the lecture "Corita Kent in Her Contexts: Art, Craft, Politics, and Society" that will explore the links between architecture, sculpture, painting, photography and craft in Kent's practice, as the artist often articulated these connections and stated that one form of self-expression is no more "art" than another.
There is one place, though, where we haven't seen Corita Kent's prints yet - fashion. But you can bet we will soon see Kent's works reappering on a runway near you in the next fashion seasons.
Image credits for this post
E eye love, 1968
Courtesy of Corita Art Center, Los Angeles
handle with care, 1967
Courtesy of the Tang Museum at Skidmore College and Corita Art Center, Los Angeles.
for emergency use soft shoulder, 1966
Courtesy of the Tang Museum at Skidmore College and Corita Art Center, Los Angeles.
Immaculate Heart College Art Department, Los Angeles, c. 1955, courtesy of Corita Art Center, Los Angeles
who came out of the water, 1966
Collection of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College
manflowers, 1969
Collection of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College
Cover, Newsweek, 25th December 1967
M however measured, 1968
Courtesy of the Tang Museum at Skidmore College and Corita Art Center, Los Angeles.
come alive, 1967
Courtesy of the Tang Museum at Skidmore College and Corita Art Center, Los Angeles.
things go better with, 1967
Courtesy of Corita Art Center, Los Angeles
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