Sister Corita Kent Essay Research Paper CORITA

Sister Corita Kent Essay, Research Paper

CORITA KENT

By John Keleher

12/14/00

American Pop Art was born of the newly found self-confidence with which American art had asserted itself. The subject matter which provided the initial impulse was the cultural concept of Americanism itself: the idea of progress, the media industry sensation, and the relative boom of stardom and cultural icons in Hollywood. The birth place of these new phenomena seems to have its roots in the city of New York, the so called cultural center of the USA. In the relative upheavals of the forties and fifties, the generation, which preceded Pop Art, brought forth a new tendency in realism using contemporary subject matter, which paved the way for the American Pop art of the sixties.

The development of American Pop Art occurred in several phases, marking various responses of different artists to the challenge of their times. The so-called “heyday” of this movement came in the middle of the sixties. This phase determined the emergence of a number of important artists whose work was rooted in the fifties and partly founded on experience acquired in commercial art, design, and poster-painting. With the sponsorship and patronism of a few certain committed and experimental New York galleries, this phase of Pop Art grew and spread quickly – despite clearly voiced protest. Pop Art achieved success and recognition as a real, new art movement. These exhibitions were accompanied by Happenings, theater performances, counter-demonstrations and street actions.

Outside New York, the earliest tangents of American Pop Art came from California. The center of this .West Coast Pop. was Los Angeles. The city produced a lasting influence and an interesting variant of Pop Art, along with many Pop artists of its own. One such artist, with her visually poetic statements, flashy fonts, eye-catching colors, and juxtaposing of upbeat language of billboard signs, street signs, magazine ads, and cereal box logos, Sister Corita Kent, was at the center of this movement

Sister Corita is widely considered one of the most prominent American graphic artists of her time and movement. Her inspiration seems to be best encapsulated in her simple statement: .I am not brave enough not to pay my income tax and risk going to jail. But I can say rather freely what I want to say with my art.. Sister Corita implemented this inspiration with a specific yet broad ranging technique of transforming and rearranging the signs, promises, and messages of mainstream culture, media, and commercialism into her own superseding spiritual and humanist conceptualizations.

This technique seems to be largely inspired by her good friend Ben Shahn who was known for his extravagant use of words in pictures, and for the social and political content of his art. Another inspiration and major influence to Sister Corita was the world famous industrial designer, Charles Eames. Eames gave her a vision of an artist as a wordly person, “connected to life, not sequestered from it.” These influences and inspirations seemed to stay with Sister Corita as she continued to create such inspired work that brought her much attention and praise until her death of cancer in 1986.

Since her death, Sister Corita and her tremendous work gradually faded from the significance of art History. However, to draw attention to her lasting contribution and continuing influence, an independent curator and art critic, Michael Duncan, recently organized .The Big G Stands for Goodness: Corita Kent.s 1960.s Pop. an exhibition entitled in honor of one of her more famous works. This exhibition surveys 50 of Sister Corita.s prints along with works by 17 contemporary L.A. artists.

These works consist of Duncan’s personal selection of L.A. artists whose work over the last 30 years whose work overlaps with Sister Corita’s in one way or another. These works are also exhibit specific examples of Sister Corita’s lasting influence amongst modern art. Karen Carson’s “Vegas style” prints not only uses similarly manipulated commercial graphics but also incorporate them in such a way that an underlying spiritual message can be derived, in this case Buddhism. Former altar boy Mike Kelley’s felt banner “The Escaped Bird” seems to be directly descended from Corita inspired parochial school decorations. Larry Johnson’s “cryptic” billboard-style photographs and Lari Pittman’s morally concerned spastic etchings are both signage based works of direct influence.

The examples are abound, and not just in the galleries of this exhibition, all in a very specific manner related to the origins of Sister Corita’s work! One of the gallery directors, Julie Joyce of the Harriet and Charles Luckman Fine Arts Complex, believes that one of the most significant results of Michael Duncan.s endeavor is the .stunning revelation of the multifarious frontiers that Corita wandered in, crossed, and in true character, transgressed.. When encountering this exhibition for the first time, Sister Corita.s prints engulf on lookers in their outstanding presence amongst the bright white walls. From a distance, the large, stylistic texts draw one in for closer examination.

As the approach nears the context becomes more and more evident. The big eye catching characteristics become relevant in their surrounding philosophical and smaller texts taken from writing