come alive

Corita Kent often incorporated literary elements from various sources (including advertising slogans, popular songs, and celebrated works of literature) into her vibrant serigraphs. Acutely aware of the power of language she aimed to create, accessible and relatable, contemporary art, using familiar phrases and images to convey deeper messages about love, hope, and justice.

Her working method, which involved juxtaposed sources, created new meanings that prompted viewers to reconsider the familiar. Kent might, for instance, pair a popular advertising slogan with a line from a poem, or use religious imagery alongside a contemporary song lyric. This approach would become something of a hallmark of her work, blurring the lines between high art and popular culture, and between the sacred and the secular.

One of the most famous examples is the 1967 print, somebody had to break the rules, that incorporates Robert Frost’s (1874 – 1963, American poet known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes) poem The Rose Family alongside a red arrow and the phrase ‘Somebody had to break the rules’ from a dishwashing detergent advertisement. This piece, like many of her others, demonstrates her ability to create layered meanings by juxtaposing diverse textual and visual elements, in a manner similar to the groundbreaking Dadaist art of the 1910s.

As a nun, Kent quoted the scriptures, incorporating biblical verses and theological concepts in her work. Traditional literature, including poetry, also played an important part. Kent is known to, frequently, have used excerpts of poetry not only by Robert Frost but also byE.E. Cummings (1894 - 1962, often regarded as one of the most important American poets of the 20th century and associated with modernist free-form poetry). Interestingly enough Cummings (or e.e. cummings as the poet habitually referred to himself) often used idiosyncratic syntax and lower-case spellings for poetic expression, a stylistic approach that, more often than not, recurs in Kent’s art.

Kent also drew tangible inspiration from various other literary giants, including Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946, American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector who moved to Paris, in 1903, where she hosted a salon bringing together leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and Henri Matisse), Samuel Beckett (1906 – 1989, Irish writer of novels, plays and poems. One of the most influential writers of the 20th century, credited with transforming the genre of the modern theatre and best remembered for his tragicomedy play Waiting for Godot [1953]. For his lasting literary contributions,Beckett received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature) and Albert Camus (1913 - 1960, French philosopher, author, dramatist and political activist; recipient of the 1957 Nobel Price in Literature), whose name is incorporated in two of the works in Firestorm Foundation: only you and i (1969) and my country (1981).

Kent, however, was by no means limited to these traditional literary sources. In fact she found an equal amount of inspiration in contemporary political speeches and pop songs. The former category includes public addresses by Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968, American Baptist minister who advanced civil rights for people of colour in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and nonviolent civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination) and Robert F. Kennedy (1925 – 1968, American politician and lawyer who served as the 64th United States attorney general, 1961 - 1964, and U.S. senator, 1965 - 1968. Like his brother John F. Kennedy, he was a prominent member of the Democratic Party and is considered an icon of modern American liberalism). The latter category includes, for example, songs by the Beatles.

In the specific case of come alive, Kent quotes one of the most celebrated songs of the 1960s: Somebody to Love, originally recorded by the Great Society and later by Jefferson Airplane. Rolling Stone magazine ranked Jefferson Airplane’s version (which inspired Kent’s work) No. 274 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Jefferson Airplane’s ferocious rock-and-roll version (reaching No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100) was not only the group’s first hit but also one of the earliest internationally celebrated songs from the San Francisco Bay area and West Coast counterculture scene, to which numerous artists and musicians would be drawn in following years. Kent’s use of lyrics from a psychedelic rock song (originally released in February 1967) clearly demonstrates her affiliation with the contemporary, and socially aware, counterculture scene of California in the 1960s.

Literature

This work is identified in the Corita Kent Archive as number 67-33.

(Eds.) Ian Berry & Michael Duncan, Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent, 2013, 147 (illustrated in colour).

Miscellaneous

Transcribed text:

come alive!

you can make it (mirror image)

The glory of Christ

is man fully alive

man fully alive

is the glory of God

the blue cross way

is very simple

we walk together

dont you need somebody to love

jefferson air plane

you can make it

Copyright Firestorm Foundation