The Armistice that ended World War I was signed on November 11, 1918. Exactly nine days later, in Fort Dodge, Iowa, an Irish Catholic couple named Robert and Edith Kent became the parents of their fifth child, a girl who was christened as Frances (Frannie) Elizabeth Kent.
Even though Francis Kent was born in Iowa and resided there initially, it is more than a bit of a stretch to pretend that her origins are Midwestern. Her father worked for a furnace company, and her parents were in no sense well-to-do. Frances was less than a year old when the family relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, where her father’s brother hired him to work in a restaurant.
Those who know about Frances Kent are likely to assume that she was a native Californian. In fact, when she was five years old, her family left Vancouver and settled in Hollywood, where they lived on properties owned by her mother’s parents. Frances Kent would live and work in Southern California for nearly five decades.
If you don’t recognize her birth name, it’s probably in part because she changed it twice. Educated in Catholic schools, she developed an interest in art early on. Later, her older sister became a nun. In 1936, having completed high school, Frances also committed her life to the church, when she joined the teaching order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. At that point, she acquired the name of Sister Mary Corita.
More than 40 years later, she left the order. She lost her teaching position at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles and moved to Boston, where she took on the secular, permanent name of Corita Kent. Nevertheless, she was still introduced by a talk show host as Sister Mary Corita. She quickly corrected the error, adding it’s sometimes a challenge to “get rid of an old habit.” Today, few if any remember her as Frances (Frannie) Kent. Instead, she is usually cited as Sister Mary Corita, or Corita Kent, the artist.
There is a moment in my past, about 1971, when, as a graduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design, a friend and I were driving on the Southeast Expressway in Boston. In view, on the side of the freeway, was a large, newly painted storage tank, which Corita Kent had transformed from an industrial eyesore to a monument of delight. You couldn’t miss it. It had refreshingly become an inspiring rainbow of calligraphic brushstrokes, a ROYGBIV (an acronym for colors on the light spectrum) for Boston Gas. It is often called “the Rainbow Swash.”
Months earlier, I had been honorably discharged from my wartime service in the U.S. Marine Corps. As a graduate student in art and design—as well as a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War—I was well aware of the earlier things that Corita Kent had done. The rest of the country had heard of her, too.
She had become controversial at a time when it felt like the country was breaking apart. In part, this was due to confusion among Roman Catholics, as the clergy and the laity tried to adapt to the “updated” and “modernized” practices that had recently been decreed by the Second Vatican Council.
Languages other than Latin became permitted during Mass. Priests addressed their audiences face to face. Head coverings became optional, and the black and white outfits of nuns were updated to the point that they almost resembled the uniforms of flight attendants.
Whereas the established traditions had served to distance church parishioners, thereby ensuring sufficient mystique, their abrupt modernization threw open the gates of the opposite track: It lessened the intrigue (and, some said, the sanctity) of age-old rituals and “made the strange familiar.”
At the time, Sister Mary Corita was one of many nuns who were increasingly accused of exceeding the bounds of permissible change. She herself had become known for creating (and inspiring students and colleagues to make) thought-provoking serigraphs. Such prints are now regarded as art, but in truth her works were largely informed by commercial art (among her early mentors was chair designer Charles Eames: “He was my first real teacher,” she said), and especially by forms of graphic design, such as colorful advertising labels and playful typographic forms in commercial signage.
In those provocative serigraphs, snippets from the writings of advocates of social justice (who had spoken out in favor of peace, equality, and decency) were as critical to the impact of her posters as were their shapes and colors. It may not be absurd to say that she was a forerunner of the current practices of graffiti and tattooing.
More generally, her modus operandi was to “make the familiar strange,” to view the settings surrounding us with fresh eyes, to make the calloused look anew. Of course, she was not alone in that. As is often noted, any number of Pop Artists (of which Corita is said to be one) did much the same in various styles. One thinks of Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup can prints and Robert Indiana’s typographic LOVE designs.
Like Indiana, Corita designed a LOVE-themed postage stamp, repurposing the calligraphic rainbow form that she had used earlier on that Boston storage tank. Her stamp was rejected initially by the U.S. Postal Service when submitted in 1980. But it was later accepted and was formally released on the last day of 1984.
Sister Mary Corita had become famous as early as 1967, when she and her artwork were featured on the cover of Newsweek, along with the caption of “The nun going modern.” She was thereafter in the spotlight, and her privacy quickly came to an end.
Eventually, her prints became viewed as scandalous, an effect that was encouraged by certain church superiors. One can imagine the fur that flew as early as 1962, when in a print she suggested that there was some resemblance between the happy-go-lucky packaging of a loaf of Wonder Bread and the church’s Eucharistic host.
As if that controversy were not sufficient, her life would soon become even more complicated by her opinions about the Vietnam War. How could religious people support the massive scale of American bombing raids? Or the hideous airborne dumping of napalm and other poisonous chemicals on civilian populations? And, ever so surely, she crossed the line when she championed the anti-war activities of the Berrigan brothers (Daniel and Philip, who were Catholic Jesuit priests) and the Catonsville Nine, Catholic activists who dared to use napalm to destroy draft cards. Her activities also voiced support for the Civil Rights Movement, equal rights for women, and other estimable causes.
Her immediate church superior, the Archbishop of Los Angeles, was not amused. A hesitant enabler of Vatican II, he condemned Corita’s artwork as “blasphemous,” and described the college where she taught at as “communist.” He sometimes recommended that priests attend the meetings of the John Birch Society, an ultraconservative right-wing sect.
In the end, Sister Mary Corita lost, as did the church and the nation. She, along with others, was denied the right to teach. To sidestep further restrictions, she resigned from the religious order and returned to the quiet of secular life in 1968.
Moving to Boston’s Back Bay, she continued to produce artwork as Corita Kent, the outspoken Catholic artist. It was a few years later that I drove past that colorful storage tank beside the Boston freeway. Sadly, three years later, Corita was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and she departed earthly life in 1986, at the age of 67.
She is today a reminder of the courage of the precious few who are compelled to protest when those in charge—in charge of the church or the nation—are deplorably in the wrong.
Roy R. Behrens is a writer and graphic designer who taught at art schools and universities for more than 45 years. See BobolinkBooks.com/ballast.