BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 9.75 x 11.25 in. / 128 pgs / 100 color / 5 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/1/2007 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2007 p. 62
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780954502522TRADE List Price: $29.95 CAD $39.95
AVAILABILITY In stock
TERRITORY NA ME
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE
St. Ives Tate St. Ives, 06/26/07-09/23/07
"The joy in her work, its riotous color, was her gift to a good gray world. It seemed as though in her art the juices of the world were running over, inundating the world, bursting the rotten wineskins of semblance, rote, and rot.... one emotion seemed denied to Catholics.... they needed joy, joy, joy! Corita Kent had it in abundance. She gave it, pressed down, flowing over."
The riotous and colorful artwork of famed catholic nun and educator Corita Kent
At 18, Corita Kent (1918-86) entered the Roman Catholic order of Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles, where she taught art and eventually ran the art department. After more than 30 years, at the end of the 1960s, she left the order to devote herself to making her own work. Over a 35-year career she made watercolors, posters, books and banners--and most of all, serigraphs--in an accessible and dynamic style that appropriated techniques from advertising, consumerism and graffiti. The earliest, which she began showing in 1951, borrowed phrases and depicted images from the Bible; by the 1960s, she was using song lyrics and publicity slogans as raw material. Eschewing convention, she produced cheap, readily available multiples, including a postage stamp. Her work was popular but largely neglected by the art establishment--though it was always embraced by such design luminaries as Charles and Ray Eames, Buckminster Fuller and Saul Bass. More recently, she has been increasingly recognized as one of the most innovative and unusual Pop artists of the 1960s, battling the political and religious establishments, revolutionizing graphic design and making some of the most striking--and joyful--American art of her era, all while living and practicing as a Catholic nun. This first study of her work, organized by Julie Ault on the 20th anniversary of Kent's death, with essays by Ault and Daniel Berrigan, is the first to examine this important American outsider artist's life and career, and contains more than 90 illustrations, many of which are reproduced for the first time, in vibrant, and occasionally Day-Glo, color.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Frieze
Martin Hebert
the bright billboards of California’s freshly invented media landscape were Corita’s chief inspiration; this places her in a continuum of religious artists... who have recognized that faith, when argued for visually, works well when grounded in the everyday. If Corita looks good to non-believers, it is because she pulls from her belief a blend of sunny optimism, delectation of reality and general sense of purpose
America: The National Catholic Review
Suzanne Wielgos
one of the most outspoken and well-known activists within the Catholic Church during the turbulent 1960s. Corita Kent, once known as Sister Mary Corita, I.H.M., never backed down from her desire to call people to the simplicity of the Gospel through revolutionary art…. Would the canon of modern art recognize a woman—and a woman religious at that—for contributions that equal those of her contemporary, Andy Warhol?
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Let's hear it for the fiery Catholic nun who led the non-violent, left-wing political charge via social activism and her own screen-printed hippie-Pop protest posters in the 1960s! Operating out of the art department of Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles, Sister Corita has influenced generations of artists, designers and those who march. "If we separate ourselves from the great arts of our time, we cannot be leaven enriching our society from within. We may well be peripheral to our society – unaware of its pains and joys, unable to communicate with it, to benefit from it or to help it. We will be refusing to care about the fight to free man that James Baldwin speaks of: 'The war of an artist with his society is a lover’s war. And he does at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself, and with that revelation, make freedom real.'" Sister Corita is fourth from the left in this picture of the serigraphy workshop at IHC. continue to blog
Election Day 2024. What can we even say? Ultimately, we couldn't think of a better book to wait it out with than Come Alive! The Spirited Art of Sister Corita, the classic compendium from Four Corners Books. This 1966 serigraph poster reads:
Get with the action
Powerful enough to make a difference
Wine that rejoyces man's heart
For emergency use soft shoulder continue to blog
In celebration of Women’s Marches all over the United States and the world this weekend, we are pleased to feature this photograph of a 1964 Mary’s Day march from Come Alive!: The Spirited Art of Sister Corita. Essayist Daniel Berrigan details a scandal that erupted after the pacifist/activist artist/nun featured the text, “Mary Mother is the juiciest tomato of them all” on a mid-60s serigraph poster reclaiming the greatest female symbol in all of Catholocism. “Who owned the Blessed Virgin?” he asks. “Well, one thing was clear: Women didn’t… Beyond doubt, dynamite dwelt in the images… She had claimed the icon.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 9.75 x 11.25 in. / 128 pgs / 100 color / 5 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $29.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $39.95 ISBN: 9780954502522 PUBLISHER: Four Corners Books AVAILABLE: 3/1/2007 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ME
Published by Four Corners Books. Text by Julie Ault, Daniel Berrigan.
The riotous and colorful artwork of famed catholic nun and educator Corita Kent
At 18, Corita Kent (1918-86) entered the Roman Catholic order of Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles, where she taught art and eventually ran the art department. After more than 30 years, at the end of the 1960s, she left the order to devote herself to making her own work. Over a 35-year career she made watercolors, posters, books and banners--and most of all, serigraphs--in an accessible and dynamic style that appropriated techniques from advertising, consumerism and graffiti. The earliest, which she began showing in 1951, borrowed phrases and depicted images from the Bible; by the 1960s, she was using song lyrics and publicity slogans as raw material. Eschewing convention, she produced cheap, readily available multiples, including a postage stamp. Her work was popular but largely neglected by the art establishment--though it was always embraced by such design luminaries as Charles and Ray Eames, Buckminster Fuller and Saul Bass. More recently, she has been increasingly recognized as one of the most innovative and unusual Pop artists of the 1960s, battling the political and religious establishments, revolutionizing graphic design and making some of the most striking--and joyful--American art of her era, all while living and practicing as a Catholic nun. This first study of her work, organized by Julie Ault on the 20th anniversary of Kent's death, with essays by Ault and Daniel Berrigan, is the first to examine this important American outsider artist's life and career, and contains more than 90 illustrations, many of which are reproduced for the first time, in vibrant, and occasionally Day-Glo, color.
