In 1967, Newsweek’s David Shirey dubbed Sister Mary Corita Kent the “hippest of all” nuns. The next year, after three decades of service, she left the religious order but kept producing the radical serigraphs that helped earn that title. Zach Feuer Gallery now presents a minisurvey of Kent’s works from the 1950s through her death in 1986—including many that surround her transition from cloistered to secular life. Bright and shockingly brave, the silk-screen prints marry biblical allusions and advertising slogans with quotes from Walt Whitman, Martin Luther King Jr., and Albert Camus. Though devotional undertones are most pronounced in earlier works, it is clear that Kent’s brand of Pop proselytizing seeks converts, namely to the churches of tolerance, peace, justice, and love.
In the cry that will be heard, 1969, a black child wails from the cover of Life magazine. Kent replaces the publication’s iconic red logo with fluorescent pink, blazing against the grisaille image like the sign of a roadside tabernacle. Below, she adds text, typeset sideways in radiant blue, which reads WHY NOT GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOUR FELLOW MAN, along with lyrics by the folk-rock band Spanky and Our Gang. In addition to these serigraphs, the exhibition provides a glimpse of Kent’s varied cultural contributions—books, her famous “love” postage stamp, and video documentation of Immaculate Heart College’s Mary Festival, which Kent transformed into a heavenly happening. The Good Word never looked so groovy.
