A Saint to Help Us See— Corita Kent
[11/6/2015] If saints are best understood as those who help us to see the world with a depth of meaning and conviction, surely the artist Corita Kent—still remembered by many as Sister Corita—belongs among the company of the saints.
Photo from my personal collection.
I was introduced to this gifted artist and educator in the late 1960s by one of her colleagues in the Art Department of Immaculate Heart College, the school where Corita taught from 1938 to 1968. Quickly, I found myself caught up in the vortex of creative energy that gathered around Corita and the Immaculate Heart College community.
Courtesy of Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles
A Pivotal Time
At the time I met Corita, she and the other Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary were in the midst of a painful transition.
The 1960s can be viewed in many ways, but for Roman Catholics the times were both exhilarating and turbulent. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) called by Pope John XXIII was a watershed event, bringing to many of the faithful the long-awaited winds of renewal in the life of the church. It was in the wake of the Council that the Immaculate Heart sisters sought to translate the spirit of Vatican II into the daily life and practice of their community. Because of her growing renown as an artist, Corita became a symbol and highly visible demonstration of this fresh engagement with the contemporary world.
But not all the leaders of the church welcomed these changes. Among them was the conservative Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, Archbishop of Los Angeles, the city where the Immaculate Heart order was based. Cardinal McIntyre gave a series of directives to the Immaculate Heart sisters (including adherence to the wearing of a nun’s habit and to traditional devotional practices). These directives took matters onto a collision course resulting in a clash of religious cultures.
In the end, the vast majority of the sisters left the order, with a good number forming a lay community called the Immaculate Heart Community. Corita left not only the order but also the college and the life of the Church as well, moving to the Boston area where she remained and continued creating until her death in 1986 at the age of 67.
A Revival of Interest
“Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent" -- Exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (2015)
During Corita’s time at Immaculate Heart College and in the years that followed she created a unique body of art, screen prints that have been compared in their originality and significance to the work of Andy Warhol and other noted pop artists.
Almost 30 years after her death, Corita’s work has recently received renewed attention, including major exhibitions at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (“Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent”) and the Harvard Art Museums (“Corita Kent and the Language of Pop”). Two outstanding books have been produced as companions to these exhibitions. [1]
Embracing the World of Corita
I had just graduated from seminary when I was first exposed to Corita’s art and to the techniques she taught and shared with her students and colleagues. This exposure took me from the linear and highly cerebral realm of conventional theological thought and carefully reasoned argument into a quite different way of comprehending the world.
While I never aspired to create screen prints in tradition of Corita, the creative practices that were at the heart of Corita’s way of engaging the world had a profound impact upon my life. Three of her creative practices, in particular, I have come to see as deeply spiritual practices that can become central to a life of faith.
First, and fundamentally, Corita taught that we must cultivate a capacity for awareness. This meant a radical openness to seeing the world with new eyes. Corita once said that if art can be seen to have a purpose, “It is, in part, to alert people to the things they might have missed.” [2]
There was a particular technique that Corita used to heighten awareness. I learned it from one of her assistants, the artist Lita Clearsky. It involved the use of a “finder.” At the time I had been part of a team creating weeklong city immersion camps for suburban youth. We sought to help these economically privileged youth experience city life free of some of the stereotypes that they may have brought with them. So we included an evening on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. We each received an old Kodak slide with the film removed. We were then given the assignment of looking at the Strip for a solid hour by closing one eye and seeing “the world” entirely through this slide which became our "finder." We slowed traffic and created a considerable stir on the Strip as over twenty of us examined building features, the street pavement, even passersby through this tiny but novel window on reality.
Over the years, in the spirit of Corita, I have intentionally tried to adjust my angle of vision on the world, to see what new dimensions of reality I could discover. By cultivating the practice of awareness, cherishing small glimpses of insight—the little “aha” moments—I was initiated into a radical approach to faith that was anchored in the fertile ground of direct experience. Joined to my love for the city, this practice eventually led to an emerging urban theology.
A second practice of Corita was that she demonstrated how to arrest spiritual meaning from the images we encounter in ordinary life. Corita saw, for example, that the mundane messages of the “Mad Men” of the advertising industry could become conveyers of a more compelling wisdom. As Eva Payne put it: “Through references to Wonder Bread, Kent invests the hyperbolic language of advertising with spiritual meaning." [3] One of Corita’s screen prints that hangs in our family's retreat house is, “Handle with Care.” In the background you see red letters that once were once part of the text of a Chevrolet advertisement that appeared in the 1960s— “See the man who can save you the most.” What is “left off” is the rest of that ad, “your Chevrolet dealer.”
Photo of "Handle with Care" from “Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent" -- Exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (2015)
This points to a third practice. Corita understood that we often discover a new and richer depth of truth as we engage in the practice of juxtaposition. By bringing two frames of reference together (such as Wonder Bread and the bread of Holy Communion) you can discover an “aha” moment, a spark of recognition. Juxtaposition welcomes paradox and complex meanings that transcend a one-dimensional grasp on reality.
Photo of a portion of "Enriched Bread | Wonder" from “Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent" -- Exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art
In her screen prints Corita broke convention by juxtaposing not only the sacred and the profane, but also words and images.Words often were the dominant “image.” As Susan Dackerman claims, “Although best known as a visual artist, Kent was an artist of the word.” [4] The poetry of an e.e. cummings or the poetic prose of the Jesuit Daniel Berrigan make appearances within her screen prints. So in “Handle with Care” the art of juxtaposition is further enriched by these words of e.e. cummings from a poem, "no time ago":
no time ago | or else a life | walking in the dark | i met christ
jesus) my heart | flopped over | and lay still | while he passed (as
close as i'm to you | yes closer | made of nothing | except loneliness
By exercising the art of juxtaposition we are able to approach the strange mystery of our own being and the wild and uncontainable love that is God. And the practice of juxtaposition has guided not only my thinking across the years but, following my ordination as a priest, it has been central to my style of preaching and to finding the place in parish life where wonder and social justice meet.
Themes
Corita explored many themes. The content of her images and the words she employed changed with the years. As Corita moved more deeply into the currents of life she explored not only the celebratory themes of joy and delight that were embodied in the circus and arrested from the world of advertising, but she also engaged the deep cries for racial justice, the rights of farmworkers, and the war in Vietnam. She brought the arts and the pursuit of social justice into a fruitful conversation.
Photo of "Black is Beautiful" from “Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent" -- Exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (2015)
The practice of awareness, the pursuit of the spiritual in the ordinary and the art of juxtaposition, these are but three powerful creative and spiritual practices that I owe to this remarkable woman.
It is fitting that the Pasadena exhibition of Corita’s art closed on November 1, the Feast of All Saints in the liturgical calendar of the church. Perhaps given the turns that were part of her life it is no longer appropriate to refer to her as Sister Corita, but somehow calling her Corita Kent is an insufficient way to capture the unique magic of her spirit. So, in a way that would undoubtedly amuse her and borrowing the language of the church, I like to think of her now as Saint Corita, occupying a place in the pantheon of the saints—those people on the balcony of our lives who inspire us and cheer us on.
Photo of “Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent" -- Exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (2015)
Endnotes:
[1] I am grateful to the Pasadena Museum of California Art whose exhibition inspired these reflections and to the Corita Art Center and the Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles, for their permission to make use of the images of Corita and her art. Ian Berry and Michael Duncan (editors), Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent (New York: Prestel Publishing, 2013); Susan Dackerman (editor), Corita Kent and the Language of Pop (Cambridge: Harvard Art Museums, 2015).
[2] Quoted in April Dammann, Corita Kent. Art and Soul. The Biography (Santa Monica: Angel City Press, 2015), p. 11.
[3] Dackerman, p. 32.
[4] Dackerman, p. 176.If saints are best understood as those who help us to see the world with a depth of meaning and conviction, surely Corita Kent—still remembered by many as Sister Corita—belongs among the company of the saints.
I was introduced to this gifted artist and educator in the late 1960s by one of the colleagues she worked with in the Art Department at Immaculate Heart College, the school where Corita taught from 1938 to 1968. Quickly, I found myself caught up in the vortex of creative energy that centered on Corita and the Immaculate Heart College community.
