Corita Kent. La révolution Joyeuse @ Collège des Bernardins, Paris

Corita Kent. La révolution Joyeuse

Collège des Bernardins, Paris

5 octobre - 21 décembre 2024

CORITA KENT

"stop the bombing," 1967,

serigraph, 18 x 23 inches © 2024,

Corita Art Center, corita.org

CORITA KENT

"passion for the possible," 1969,

serigraph, 23 x 12 inches © 2024,

Corita Art Center, corita.org

CORITA KENT

We Can Create Life Without War Billboard, c. 1984.

Image courtesy of the Corita Art Center,

Los Angeles, corita.org

Le Collège des Bernardins présente "Corita Kent. La révolution joyeuse", première exposition en France dédiée à l'artiste américaine CORITA KENT (1918-1986) connue sous le nom de Sister Mary Corita. Son œuvre est à l'image de son parcours atypique : à la fois audacieuse, militante et pédagogue. À travers le regard de Corita Kent, c’est une époque à redécouvrir, celle des États-Unis des années 1950 à 1980. Sont également exposées les reproductions d'une vingtaine d'oeuvres et d'une trentaine de photographies.

Corita Kent fait le choix de la technique de la sérigraphie, qu’elle contribue à faire reconnaître comme un médium artistique à part entière. Ainsi, ses créations transmettent au plus grand nombre ses messages d'amour et de foi. Ses sérigraphies, audacieuses et colorées, combinent des images tirées de la publicité et de journaux avec des textes allant de versets bibliques à des slogans, des paroles de chansons et de la littérature. Dans le contexte des années 1960 et 1970, l’émancipation de la jeunesse, l’affirmation des mouvements féministes, l’émergence des courants de la contre-culture artistique américaine, la profusion des codes de la société de consommation sont pour Corita Kent des sources d’inspiration. Au cours des années 60, son travail se teinte d'un engagement plus politique, incitant les spectateurs à réfléchir à la pauvreté, au racisme, à la guerre et aux injustices sociales.

Cette exposition revient sur son parcours personnel, ses engagements et le nouveau langage graphique que l’artiste a lancé. "Corita Kent. La révolution joyeuse" revient aussi sur les "Mary's Day", journée de Marie de l'Immaculate Heart College, l'école dont Corita Kent a dirigé le département artistique. Sa vision extraordinaire et ses compétences artistiques en tant qu'enseignante ont contribué à transformer le petit campus en un haut lieu dynamique de l'innovation artistique et en un modèle singulier d'engagement communautaire et social.

Irregular Bulletin, une publication du département d’Art de l’Immaculate Heart College est présentée à cette exposition. De 1956 à 1963, Sister Madeleine Mary, le mentor de Corita Kent, édite le magazine, Irregular Bulletin, qui rompt avec les règles des magazines traditionnels. Corita Kent est responsable d'une grande partie de la documentation photographique des éditions ultérieures et est considérée comme la « photographe officielle ». L’édition présentée dans l’exposition est la plus complète à être publiée : elle compile les années 1959, 1960 et 1961, et compte plus de 400 pages. Ce numéro est unique car il donne un aperçu du voyage de Sister Madeleine Mary et Sister Mary Corita en Europe, commencé à New York. De novembre 1959 à janvier 1960, elles voyagent dans de nombreuses villes de France, d'Italie, de Grèce, de Turquie, d'Égypte et d'Espagne, prennent plus de 8 000 photographies et achètent des centaines de livres, d'objets d'art et d'artefacts, qui ont tous été envoyés au département d'art du collège et ont été ajoutés à la célèbre collection d'art populaire.

Footnotes and Headlines : A Play-Pray Book, premier livre d’écrits de Corita Kent, datant de 1967, préfacé par le p. Daniel Berrigan, est consultable sur un écran digital, dans cette exposition. Ce livre innovant combine des conceptions graphiques percutantes de Corita Kent avec des messages poignants et souvent politiquement “chargés”. En inversant délibérément la hiérarchie des titres et des notes de bas de page dans son titre, Corita Kent propose aux lecteurs de les considérer sur le même plan, soulignant l'importance d'une lecture lente et attentive. Corita Kent ne réinvente pas seulement la forme du livre mais crée aussi une nouvelle forme de prière. L’environnement proche et quotidien, les mots, les phrases, les notes de bas de pages, les titres, les publicités, devient un laboratoire joyeux et une source d’inspiration spirituelle : « Jouer, c’est prier, et prier, c’est jouer ».

C'est grâce à la collaboration avec le Corita Art Center, une trentaine d’œuvres originales de ses productions sérigraphiques seront exposées. Cette technique, érigée en médium artistique, lui permet en effet une reproduction en masse de ses visuels et de ses messages de paix. La sélection de photographies, diffusée grâce à des visionneuses de diapositives, dans le respect des consignes laissées par Corita Kent, sont prises principalement par Corita entre 1955 et 1968. Ces photographies rares donnent un aperçu de sa vie et de sa pratique artistique alors qu'elle était professeur et directrice du département d'art du Collège du Cœur Immaculé, et documentent l'histoire peu connue de la communauté d'étudiants, d'enseignants et de l'Ordre du Cœur Immaculé de Marie qui ont appris et enseigné dans ce collège autrefois renommé.

Lieu de dialogue avec les courants intellectuels et artistiques de la société et de son époque, le Collège des Bernardins accueille l’exposition de cette femme ancrée dans la société américaine et dans l’Église de la seconde moitié du XXème siècle. Comme les moines cisterciens du XIIIème siècle venus s’installer au Collège des Bernardins pour être au milieu du monde et de ses questionnements, Corita Kent a embrassé son époque, qu’elle aborde avec l’espérance chrétienne et joyeuse.

Le partenariat avec l’École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris témoigne de la place accordée aux dimensions graphiques de son oeuvre et à la dimension pédagogique de son enseignement. Dans le cadre d’un projet pédagogique, un workshop a été organisé à l'École des Arts Décoratifs du 23 au 27 septembre 2024, pour des élèves de 3ème année Design Textile et Matière et 4ème année Design Graphique. Ce partenariat avec le Collège des Bernardins permet à des étudiants de conceptualiser, proposer et réaliser sept bannières, en sérigraphie textile, (format de 70 x 140 cm), présentées dans cette exposition.

Exposition sur une proposition de Nicolas de Palmaert.

Commissariat de l’exposition : Clara Murawiec et Juliette Oudot, designers graphiques, diplômées de l'Ecole des Arts Décoratifs

Autres expositions consacrées à Corita Kent sur Wanafoto (Textes en anglais) :

Corita Kent: heroes and sheroes, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2021)

Corita Kent___Joyful Revolutionary, TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol, Innsbruck (2020)

Corita Kent: Works from the 1960s, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2019)

Corita Kent and the Language of Pop, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (2015)

Power Up: Sister Corita and Donald Moffett, Interlocking, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, (2000)

Collège des Bernardins

20 rue de Poissy, 75005 Paris

www.collegedesbernardins.fr

Throughlines: Connections in the Collection @ Portland Art Museum

Throughlines: 

Connections in the Collection

Portland Art Museum

October 28, 2023 – November 1, 2024

Corita Kent (American, 1918-1986) 

somebody had to break the rules, 1967

Color screenprint on Pellon, image/sheet: 29 7/8 in x 36 1/16 in 

Museum Purchase: Print Acquisition Fund.

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 2016.89.1

Gabriel Revel (French, 1643-1712) 

Portrait of a Sculptor, ca. 1680 

Oil on canvas, 26 1/4 in x 22 1/4 in 

Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Edwin Binney, 3rd.

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 68.34

Bue Kee (American, 1893-1985) 

Self-Portrait, ca. 1930 

Oil on canvas, 19 1/4 in x 15 1/2 in 

Gift of Michael Parsons and Marte Lamb. 

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 2005.114.3

Yanagihara Mutsuo (Japanese, born 1934) 

Mandolin, 1966 

Stoneware with brown and yellow glaze, 23 1/2 in x 9 1/2 in x 10 5/8 in

Museum Purchase: Caroline Ladd Pratt Fund. 

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 68.23

The seventh oldest museum in the United States, the Portland Art Museum is internationally recognized for its permanent collection and ambitious special exhibitions drawn from the Museum’s holdings and the world’s finest public and private collections. The Museum’s collection of more than 50,000 objects, displayed in 112,000 square feet of galleries, reflects the history of art from ancient times to today. The collection is distinguished for its holdings of arts of the native peoples of North America, English silver, and the graphic arts. An active collecting institution dedicated to preserving great art for the enrichment of future generations, the Museum devotes 90 percent of its galleries to its permanent collection.

Throughlines: Connections in the Collection offers a fresh look at the Portland Art Museum’s collections by bringing together artworks from diverse geographies, cultures, and time periods that do not typically share a gallery.

Ka'ila Farrell-Smith (American, Klamath, and Modoc, born 1982) 

After Boarding School: In Mourning, 2011

Oil on canvas, 36 in x 24 in 

Museum Purchase: Funds provided by the Native American Art Council 

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 2012.100.1

Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977) 

Likunt Daniel Ailin (The World Stage: Israel), 2013 

Bronze, 45 in x 23 in x 19 in, Museum Purchase:

Funds provided by patrons of the 2014 New for the Wall 

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 2014.125.1

William Cumming (American, 1917-2010) 

Three Kids, 1968 

Oil on Masonite, 23 1/2 in x 35 5/8 in 

Gift of Sandra Stone Peters. 

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 86.70.5

Throughout time and place, artists have created images, objects, and experiences that ask us to consider ourselves and our world from different perspectives. Leading with a sense of curiosity and wonder, the curatorial team searched the collections, reflecting on the ways art connects everyone across time. They asked themselves and each other: What does a video art installation share with a European oil painting? A conceptual art photograph with a Native American woven basket? A Chinese vase with a print emblazoned with a poetic message?

The curatorial team developed four themes, including each collection broadly and in surprising ways. Drawing from portraits and figurative art, Pose looks at our desire to represent one another and to be represented. Environment explores how artists help us understand and honor nature and place. Expect the Unexpected shows how artists innovate with materials and explore unconventional processes in ways that broaden how art can be made and what it might mean. Color presents the powerful pop of pigments, paints, inks, glazes, and dyes, vibrantly lifting the senses.

The exhibition will also include programming curated by PAM CUT// Center for an Untold Tomorrow, the Museum’s film and new media arm, along with the Museum’s Learning and Community Partnerships department. Programs and activations include screenings, discussion groups, pop-ups, workshops, and more.

Throughlines is intended to be fun, inspiring, and thought-provoking for visitors who are accustomed to seeing the collection in siloed galleries. As the Museum campus undergoes transformation, this exhibition offers a preview of the kinds of collaborations and creative approaches that visitors will encounter when the Museum’s renovation and expansion project is complete.

Tim Bavington (American, born England, born 1966) 

Voodoo Child, Slight Return (solo), 2002

Acrylic on canvas, 54 in x 72 in 

Gift of the Contemporary Art Council. 

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 2002.12

Zhang Hongtu (Chinese, active United States, born 1943), 

After Shitao's Landscape Album:

Shitao–Van Gogh, from the series Ongoing Shan Shui, 2002

Oil on canvas, 48 in x 36 in, 

Gift of Judith B. Anderson

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 2017.31.1

Raymond Jonson (American, 1891-1982) 

City Perspectives, 1932 

Oil on canvas, 47 3/4 in x 37 3/4 in 

Gift of Mr. Arthur H. Johnson. 

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 78.17

Curatorial Team

Throughlines: Connections in the Collection is presented by the Portland Art Museum’s curatorial team, in collaboration with colleagues in  PAM CUT// Center for an Untold Tomorrow and the Museum’s Learning and Community Partnerships department.

Kathleen Ash-Milby, Curator of Native American Art

Mary Weaver Chapin, Ph.D., Curator of Prints and Drawings

Julia Dolan, Ph.D., The Minor White Senior Curator of Photography

Amy Dotson, Curator of Film and New Media and Director of PAM CUT

Becky Emmert, Head of Accessibility

Erin Grant, Assistant Curator of Native American Art

Jaleesa Johnston, Head of Public Programs and Engagement

Jeannie Kenmotsu, Ph.D., The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Asian Art

Grace Kook-Anderson, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art

Sara Krajewski, The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

Stephanie Parrish, Director of Learning and Community Partnerships

Ben Popp, Head of Artist Services, PAM CUT

Teena Wilder, Art Bridges Community Partnerships & Curatorial Fellow

PORTLAND ART MUSEUM

1219 SW Park Aveenue, Portland, OR 97205

portlandartmuseum.org

Corita Kent @ Andrew Kreps Gallery, NYC – "heroes and sheroes" Exhibition

Corita Kent: heroes and sheroes

Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York

July 8 – August 13, 2021

Andrew Kreps Gallery presents heroes and sheroes, an exhibition of artworks by CORITA KENT at 22 Cortlandt Alley. Centered on Corita Kent’s series of the same title made between 1968 and 1969, the exhibition marks the first time heroes and sheroes has been exhibited in New York in its entirety.

In the summer of 1965, following the Watts Uprising in Los Angeles, Corita Kent reproduced the front page of the Los Angeles Times within her work my people. While in previous years, Corita Kent had appropriated text from consumer and mass culture, my people is the first example of Kent using appropriation as a direct response to the socially charged events of her time. The paper’s headlines were rotated and partially obscured by a swath of red, in which Corita Kent handwrote a text attributed to Maurice Ouellet, a priest and civil rights activist who participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches earlier that year. Ouellet’s words form a rebuttal to the paper’s racially charged headlines describing the Uprising as a “Blood Hungry Mob.”  In response, Ouellet’s quote reads: “Youth is a time of rebellion. Rather than squelch the rebellion, we might better enlist the rebels to join that greatest rebel of his time-Christ himself.” 

In the years following, Corita Kent continued to create singular compositions, in which bold and colorful text promoted messages of faith, acceptance, and love. Simultaneously, Kent rose to national prominence as a public figure - she was named Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year in 1966 and featured on the December cover of Newsweek in 1967. With this exposure came increased scrutiny of Kent’s outspokenness as the conservative Archdiocese of Los Angeles mounted intense pressure on both Kent and her order, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, over the changes they were making under the directives of Vatican II. In the summer of 1968, Kent would take a sabbatical from Immaculate Heart College, subsequently leaving the order and seeking dispensation from her vows.

This would mark a key turning point in Carita Kent’s work, as she began heroes and sheroes later that same year. Reflecting on the social and political movements of the time, much like my people before it, heroes and sheroes demonstrates not only Kent’s advocacy but also her acute awareness of how these events were framed and disseminated through mass media. Collaging images appropriated from newspapers and magazines with poetry, song lyrics, quotations from figures within the religious left (such as Daniel Berrigan and the Catonsville Nine), and Carita Kent’s own writings, heroes and sheroes addresses issues such as the civil rights, labor, and anti-war movements, nuclear disarmament, and the political assassinations that defined the 1960s. Works like the cry that will be heard reflect the urgency of the moment, imploring the viewer to “give a damn about your fellow man.” Other works, notably american sampler, position themselves as acerbic critique. Utilizing the colors red, white, and blue, Kent riffs on the tradition of the “sampler”, a piece of embroidery used to demonstrate a variety of needlework techniques. Here, Corita Kent’s sampler repeats the words AMERICAN, ASSASSINATION, VIOLENCE, and VIETNAM in stacked lines that resemble the stripes of the flag, using shifts in color to highlight different combinations of words such as SIN, I, and NATION. Prompting the viewer to consider their own individual and moral responsibility, the work’s last line poses the question “WHY” next to the answer: “WHY NOT.”

Filling the main gallery at 22 Cortlandt Alley, the twenty-nine prints comprising heroes and sheroes reflect the enduring spirit that gave rise to Corita Kent’s nickname—“Joyous Revolutionary.” The series simultaneously highlights the potential of new life, a belief in the power of collective action, and the joy that exists in the everyday. Shying away from optimism, Kent instead emphasized the importance of hope in works like a passion for the possible, employing the image of an energetic crowd of demonstrators, arms extended upwards in peace signs. Positioned above the photograph is a text from activist and clergyman William Sloane Coffin, which still resonates over fifty years after its making: “...hope demands that we take a dim view of the present because we hold a bright view of the future; and HOPE AROUSES AS NOTHING ELSE CAN AROUSE A PASSION FOR THE POSSIBLE.”

CORITA KENT (1918–1986) was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. Earlier this year, Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to designate Corita Kent’s former studio at 5518 Franklin Avenue as a Historic-Cultural Monument. Corita Kent’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; SFMOMA, San Francisco; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; mumok, Vienna; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Frac Ile-de-France, Paris; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, among others. Notable exhibitions include: Corita Kent: Get With The Action, Ditchling Museum of Art+Craft (2019); Corita Kent and the Language of Pop, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (2015); Someday is Now, Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY (2013); People Like Us: Prints from the 1960s by Sister Corita, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2007).

This exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Corita Art Center, Los Angeles.

ANDREW KREPS GALLERY

22 Cortlandt Alley, New York, NY 10013

www.andrewkreps.com

Corita Kent___Joyful Revolutionary @ TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol, Innsbruck

Corita Kent___Joyful Revolutionary 

TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol, Innsbruck

May 30 – October 11, 2020

Corita Kent

E eye love, 1968

Serigraph, 587 x 584 mm,

Courtesy Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart

Community, Los Angeles

Photo: Arthur Evans

Corita Kent

Q elephant’s q, 1968

Serigraph, 586 x 582 mm,

Courtesy Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart

Community, Los Angeles

Photo: Arthur Evans

Corita Kent

mary does laugh, 1964, and someday is now, 1964

Serigraphs, various different dimensions, exhibition

view Corita Kent___Joyful Revolutionary,

TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol, 2020

Courtesy Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart

Community, Los Angeles

Photo: Günter Kresser

The silkscreens of CORITA KENT (1918-1986) combine diverse visual and textual sources in unexpected and joyous ways. She colorfully juxtaposed the aesthetic experience of everyday life, spiritual messages, literary quotations, and items taken from popular culture and mass media sources, mobilizing them in the service of social justice. In her work, letters and language become form and image, form and image become content.

Corita Kent’s serigraphs can be regarded both as Pop Art and a precursor to the Pictures Generation. Joining the Order of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles at the age of 18, she remained a member of the order for three decades, becoming a renowned art professor at Immaculate Heart College and eventually heading its art department. She was a fervent advocate for peace and social justice, becoming a well-known public figure as an artist, educator, and public figure in the 1960s—featured in 1967 on the cover of Newsweek under the headline, “THE NUN: GOING MODERN.” Her affiliation with and investment in Pop Art, with all the cultural changes this movement came to connote in its merging of elite and popular culture, was fed by her commitment to the revitalization and renewal of religious life brought about by the Second Vatican Council. In Corita Kent’s work, the one was put at the service of the other, resulting in her art’s unique and challenging defiance of classification.

From the early 1950s onward, Kent worked mostly in serigraphs, which she considered an affordable and democratic art form. While early works contain figurative and religious motifs, in the 1960s her art became increasingly political, incorporating photographs appropriated from the mass media of figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, César Chávez, and Daniel and Philip Berrigan as a means of voicing her support for various social and political struggles, such as the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements.

Corita Kent

it can be said of them, 1969

Serigraph, 305 x 584 mm

Courtesy Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart

Community, Los Angeles

Photo: Arthur Evans

Corita Kent

american sampler, 1969

Serigraph, 586 x 306 mm,

Courtesy Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart

Community, Los Angeles.

Photo: Arthur Evan

Exemplifying Corita Kent’s approach is american sampler, a work that illustrates how she used color and reference to render visible political complexities. Its stamped lettering in red, white, and blue refers both to the American flag and the typography of “Old West” wanted posters, while the playful interweaving of foreground and background breaks down the structure of individual words, disclosing a second order of meaning within the explicit text (for example, she plays on the fact that the word “ASSASSINATION” contains within it “SIN,” “I,” and “NATION”), underlining the morality of her message and imploring the viewer to consider their own individual responsibility.

With Corita Kent___Joyful Revolutionary, the TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol presents a solo exhibition of the artist for the first time in Austria, focusing on her serigraphs from the 1960s—contextualized with an abundance of rare archival and documentary material. The works from this period are decidedly political, an expression of Kent’s critical eye for social issues of the day that at the same time evince her hopeful spirituality. They resonate with current questions about the socio-critical potential of art and the possibility for changing received traditions.

Curated by Nina Tabassomi

TAXIS PALAIS KUNSTHALLE TIROL

Maria-Theresien-Str. 45, 6020 Innsbruck

www.taxispalais.art

Corita Kent: Works from the 1960s @ Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York

Corita Kent: Works from the 1960s

Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York

April 26 – July 3, 2019

“It is a huge danger to pretend awful things do not happen. But you need enough hope to keep on going. I am trying to make hope. And you have to grab it where you can.” – Corita Kent

Andrew Kreps Gallery and kaufmann repetto, New York present an exhibition of works by CORITA KENT (b. 1918, Fort Dodge, Iowa, d. 1986, Boston) at 55 Walker Street.

Corita Kent was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. In 1936, CoritaKent  joined the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, taking the name Sister Mary Corita. She began teaching in the Immaculate Heart College art department by 1947 and produced her first serigraphs in the early 50s. While her first prints consisted of dense, figurative compositions with religious themes and iconography, by 1962—after seeing Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles—her work evolved into a singular mode of Pop art. Reflecting a wide breadth of disciplinary interests, her bright compositions were not limited to the staple imagery and language of consumer and mass culture but also integrated philosophy, literature, street signage, scripture, and song lyrics in bold text and abstract forms.

The exhibition focuses on the years following 1962, displaying works that combine themes of faith, acceptance, and politics. Taking a celebratory approach to the everyday, Corita Kent combined texts from newspapers, supermarkets, and advertising, alongside passages from figures such as Daniel Berrigan, e.e. cummings, Martin Luther King Jr., and others. These vibrant calls to arms encouraged the viewer to work towards mutual respect and dignity for all people. As tensions surrounding the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War escalated in the late 60s, so did Corita Kent's response to current events as she asked: "Why not give a damn about your fellow man?" Following mounting pressure from the conservative Archdiocese of Los Angeles, as well as exhaustion from her increasingly public profile, Corita Kent ultimately left the order in 1968 and moved to Boston where she continued to pursue her work.

Corita Kent’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; and others. Notable exhibitions include: ‘Corita Kent: Get With The Action,’ Ditchling Museum of Art+Craft, Ditchling, England (2019); ‘Corita Kent and the Language of Pop,’ Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (2015); ‘Someday is Now,’ Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY (2013); Yes ‘People Like Us: Prints from the 1960s by Sister Corita,’ Museum Ludwig, Ludwig, Germany (2007).

ANDREW KREPS GALLERY

55 Walker Street, New York, NY 10013

www.andrewkreps.com

Corita Kent and the Language of Pop @ Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge + San Antonio Museum of Art

Corita Kent and the Language of Pop

Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge

September 3, 2015 - January 3, 2016 

CORITA KENT

the juiciest tomato of all, 1964 

Screenprint 

Collection of Jason Simon, New York 

© Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles

The Harvard Art Museums present Corita Kent and the Language of Pop, a special exhibition on display September 3, 2015 to January 3, 2016 at Harvard before travelling to the San Antonio Museum of Art, where it will be on view February 13 to May 8, 2016. The exhibition is curated by Susan Dackerman, the former Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints at the Harvard Art Museums (2005–2014) and current consultative curator of prints. Corita Kent was an activist nun who juxtaposed spiritual, pop cultural, literary, and political writings alongside symbols of consumer culture and modern life in order to create bold images and prints during the 1960s. Also known as Sister Mary Corita, Kent is often seen as a curiosity or an “anomaly” in the pop art movement. Corita Kent and the Language of Pop positions Corita Kent and her work within the pop art idiom, showing how she is an innovative contemporary of Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, and other pop art icons. The exhibition also expands the current scholarship on Corita Kent’s art, elevating the role of her artwork by identifying its place in the artistic and cultural movements of her time.

CORITA KENT (American, 1918–1986) was a Roman Catholic nun, an artist, and an educator. From 1936 to 1968 she lived, studied, and taught at the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles, and she headed the art department at the college there from 1964 to 1968. In 1968, Corita Kent left Immaculate Heart and relocated to Boston, where she lived until her death in 1986. The screenprints she created during the 1960s are typical examples of pop art, embodying the vivid palette, focus on everyday subjects, and mass-produced quality of ephemeral objects. Corita Kent and the Language of Pop examines Kent’s screenprints as well as her 1971 design painted on the Boston Gas (now National Grid) tank, a roadside landmark in Boston.

The exhibition frames Corita Kent’s work within the pop movement while also considering other prevailing artistic, social, and religious movements of the time. In particular, the exhibition explores how Corita Kent’s work both responded to and advanced the concerns of Vatican II, a movement to modernize the Catholic Church and make it more relevant to contemporary society. The church advocated, among other changes to traditional liturgy, conducting the Mass in the local, vernacular language. Corita Kent, like her pop art contemporaries, simultaneously turned to vernacular texts for inclusion in her prints, drawing from such colloquial sources as product slogans, street signs, and Beatles lyrics.

“Because of Kent’s status as a nun, her biography has been the focus of most scholarship about her work,” said Susan Dackerman. “However, when you examine her work alongside contemporary pop artists like Warhol and Ruscha, it becomes clear that she was a critical and relevant voice in the emerging pop discourse of the 1960s.”

The exhibition grew out of conversations Susan Dackerman had with Jennifer Roberts, the Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities in the Department of History of Art and Architecture (HAA) at Harvard, around the time that Roberts was teaching an undergraduate seminar on pop art during the Spring 2010 semester. Roberts often brought her students to examine prints in the museums’ collections, and these meetings generated discussions about Kent’s work as well as its relationship to the work of her better-known contemporaries such as Warhol, Ruscha, Roy Lichtenstein, and James Rosenquist, among others. The following semester, HAA professors Henri Zerner and Benjamin Buchloh taught a graduate seminar on reproductive technologies in the 1960s, which ignited interest in printed pop among Harvard’s graduate students in art history. Soon after, a project group came together, providing a forum for conversations about Kent’s work that ultimately led to the development of the exhibition’s six central themes: Los Angeles, c. 1962; The Word; Salvation at the Supermarket; L.A. Traffic; The Political Landscape; and Boston, 1971: The Gas Tank. Kent’s papers, deposited at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, were an important resource to the team of scholars and students. 

“Installed in our generous new Special Exhibitions Gallery and reflecting our research and teaching mission, Corita Kent and the Language of Pop brilliantly recalibrates, recasts, reconsiders, and repositions Corita Kent’s remarkable work,” said Deborah Martin Kao, the Landon and Lavinia Clay Chief Curator and Interim Co-Director of the Harvard Art Museums. “In this enlightening special exhibition and its accompanying catalogue, Susan Dackerman and her collaborators also argue for a broadening of how we apprehend pop art, cleaving it from its iconic and seemingly unassailable historic wrapper and returning it to the immediacy of the beat of the streets of 1960s Los Angeles, New York, and even Boston.”

Over 150 prints, along with a selection of films, books, and other works, are included in the exhibition. More than 60 of Corita Kent’s prints, depicting language garnered from popular culture such as product slogans and road signs, appear alongside about the same number of works by her prominent contemporaries, including Warhol, Ruscha, Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, and Robert Indiana.

Rarely shown (and newly restored) films by Thomas Conrad and Baylis Glascock that feature Kent at Immaculate Heart in the 1960s are presented in the exhibition. The films include Glascock’s Mary’s Day 1964, Mary’s Day 1965, and We Have No Art (1967), as well as Conrad’s Alleluia: Being a True Account of the Life and Times of Sister Mary Corita IHM (1967). Another screen in the exhibition is dedicated to slides taken by Corita Kent and her associates at Immaculate Heart College during the 1950s and ’60s. These slides depict their pop art projects as well as document visits to museums, galleries, and artists’ studios. The slides also include shots of magazine advertisements, supermarket goods, and street signs, many of which were incorporated into Corita Kent’s screenprints.

In 1971, Corita Kent created a bold, pop art design for the Boston Gas (now National Grid) tank located alongside I-93 south of downtown Boston. Her vivid rainbow swashes of color on the tank can be viewed as the culmination of her engagement with pop art, providing Boston with its own pop art monument, not unlike the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. A large photo mural of the tank appears in the exhibition, along with the first public presentation of the 7-inch-high wooden tank model on which Corita Kent executed her design.

A related exhibition exploring Kent’s teaching, artistic process, career, and activism, Corita Kent: Footnotes and Headlines, is on display August 24 through September 18, 2015, at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

A catalogue, published by the Harvard Art Museums and distributed by Yale University Press, accompanies the exhibition. Through nearly 90 illustrated entries and four essays by distinguished scholars, the publication fills a gap in the scholarship about Kent’s work. The catalogue was edited by Susan Dackerman and features essays by Dackerman; Julia Bryan-Wilson, associate professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of California, Berkeley; Richard Meyer, the Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History at Stanford University; and Jennifer L. Roberts, the Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. The illustrated entries were written by Dackerman and graduate students from a variety of disciplines.

Corita Kent and the Language of Pop was organized by the Harvard Art Museums and curated by Susan Dackerman, the former Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints at the Harvard Art Museums (2005–2014) and current consultative curator of prints.

Lenders include: Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Thomas Conrad, Cupertino, California; Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles; Davis Museum at Wellesley College; Fine Arts Library, Harvard University; Baylis Glascock, Los Angeles; Mary Anne Karia (née Mikulka), New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Grid, Boston; The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; Jason Simon, New York; and three anonymous lenders.

HARVARD ART MUSEUMS

32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

www.harvardmuseums.org

Power Up: Sister Corita and Donald Moffett, Interlocking at UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Power Up: Sister Corita and Donald Moffett, Interlocking

UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

February 6 - April 2, 2000

The exhibition "Power Up: Sister Corita and Donald Moffett, Interlocking," organized by artist Julie Ault, presents a dynamic visual dialogue between two artists of different generations. Both Sister Corita Kent and Donald Moffett have engaged bold graphic design and montage techniques to form compositions that communicate their ideas and social convictions.

For Sister Corita Kent (1918-1986), later known simply as Corita, distribution as a populist principle was key in determining her medium of expression. She learned printmaking in order to reproduce affordable images in large volume. Hailed the "modern nun" on the cover of "Newsweek" Magazine in 1966, Sister Corita embraced the new freedoms engendered by the Vatican Council II in her art and in her capacity as teacher and chair of the art department at the Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles. Using her art as a platform in the 1960s, Sister Corita Kent turned her attention to issues ranging from conflicts between radical and conservative positions in the Catholic Church; advertising and market culture; U.S. imperialism abroad in Vietnam; and racism at home. By 1969, suffering from frequent censure from local Church officials, among other factors, she left the order and her religious community and moved to Boston, Massachusetts. Her serigraphs included in "Power Up" span the 1960s and include examples from the Grunwald Center's extensive collection of serigraphs bequeathed to the Center by Corita herself.

As artist, designer and activist, Donald Moffett (b.1955) has broadly contributed to the gay liberation and AIDS-activist movements. Moffett's art is conceptually driven and includes photographs, paintings, sculpture, postcards and posters. A member of the collective "Gran Fury" from 1987-1993, Moffett worked individually and collaboratively on graphic campaigns designed to communicate the seriousness of the AIDS crisis. Moffett made a series of images in the form of disarmingly simple photo-text montages for the "Age of AIDS" column in "The Village Voice," a New York weekly newspaper. These temporal pieces relied on metaphor and expressed commentary in visual shorthand form, often with complex implications and wicked humor. These works are featured in "Power Up," alongside Moffett's mixed media works addressing public morality as interpreted and legislated by conservative religious and political institutions. The serigraphs of Sister Corita Kent and the mixed-media works of New York-based Moffett are juxtaposed in "Power Up" to show both artists and their works in a new context.

Beginning with her work with "Group Material" (1979-1996), a collective which organized exhibitions and public projects that explored interrelationships between politics and aesthetics, Julie Ault takes on the role of curator as part of her artistic practice. Julie Ault has said "I view an exhibition akin to an artwork in which every conceptual and concrete aspect requires attention and involves choice, not convention. An exhibition is not simply a frame for presenting artworks or artifacts; from its overall structure to its every detail an exhibition is content itself."

Julie Ault's lively exhibition design for "Power Up" derives from the formal features and aesthetic strategies of Corita's and Moffett's artworks. Ault's installation of "Power Up" includes the construction of displays and seating, overlaid in news articles or quotations to illustrate the context in which the artists created their work. Ault's exhibition deepens the rich legacy and interplay of art, design and social relevance.

Also on view in the exhibition are Baylis Glascock's film "Corita Kent: On Teaching and Celebration" and "Target City Hall," a video produced by DIVA TV in 1989 about one demonstration organized by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP).

The "Power Up: Sister Corita and Donald Moffett, Interlocking" exhibition is an expanded version of a project Ault originally organized for the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1997.

UCLA HAMMER MUSEUM

10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Westwood Village, Los Angeles, CA 90024

www.hammer.ucla.edu