The Catholic Church is often seen as an institution predicated upon a stable, often impermeable cannon. The intersection of the Vatican II, the Viet Nam war, and the pop Art movement, however, led nun and artist Corita Kent to create pieces that were simultaneously subversive while paying homage to a God she found in a dogmatic institution.
Kent’s art reflects her activism within the counterculture of the 60s, as she participated in and designed posters for anti-war rallies. She tackled issues of race, poverty, and the Viet Nam war using the medium of silkscreen, which she saw as an egalitarian way of making art because it was cheap and accessible, thus inclusive.
As is typical of pop art, Kent uses images of popular culture and advertisements. Where Warhol twisted capitalist images into art, Kent transformed these ubiquitous messages into prayer. For example, she appropriated the General Mills slogan, “Big G stands for goodness,” and transformed it. In it’s new context, the Big G stands for God and goodness.
Kent was later commissioned by public entities, including the Boston Gas Company fuel tank and the Postal Service’s “Love” stamp but went unrecognized in the art and gallery world for decades. Ian Berry, the co-curator of “Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent,” speculates that “an artist was from New York they were a man they were an epic abstract painter, she wore a habit, she just didn’t look like what the movie version of an artist looked like.” This retrospective aims to give Kent a place on the art history timeline.
Despite her obvious devotion, Kent decided to leave the Church in 1968, saying that the system should be “opening up ideas, rather than defining and confining them.” Her philosophy of art making ultimately clashed with the institution she was creating within. One of her only rules as a teacher at Immaculate Heart College was to “break all the rules. Even our own rules.”