Corita Kent

Corita Kent (* 20. November 1918; † 18. September 1986), aka Schwester Mary Corita Kent, geboren als Frances Elizabeth Kent in Fort Dodge, Iowa war eine US-amerikanische Nonne, Künstlerin, Lehrerin, Philosophin und politische Aktivistin. Sister Corita zählt zu den innovativsten und ungewöhnlichsten Pop-Art-Künstlerinnen der 1960er Jahre.

Leben

1936 wurde sie (bis 1968) Nonne im Orden Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Kent unterrichtete am Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles. Dort entwarf sie „10 Rules for Students, Teachers, and Life“, was fälschlicherweise oft John Cage zugeschrieben wird, tatsächlich durch ihn aber bekannt wurde. Sie war u. a. mit Alfred Hitchcock, John Cage, Saul Bass, Buckminster Fuller sowie mit Charles und Ray Eames befreundet.

Werke

Ihre Bilder sind u. a. in der Sammlung des Victoria and Albert Museum, des Art Institute of Chicago, des Museum of Modern Art, des Boston Museum of Fine Arts, des Museum Ludwig, der Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, des Whitney Museum of American Art, des Museum of Fine Arts in Boston und des The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

10 Rules for Students, Teachers, and Life

• Rule One: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for a while.
• Rule Two: General duties of a student – pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.
• Rule Three: General duties of a teacher – pull everything out of your students.
• Rule Four: Consider everything an experiment.
• Rule Five: be self-disciplined – this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
• Rule Six: Nothing is a mistake. There's no win and no fail, there's only make.
• Rule Seven: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It's the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.
• Rule Eight: Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
• Rule Nine: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
• Rule Ten: „We're breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.“ (John Cage)
• Hints: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything – it might come in handy later.

Ausstellungen

• Let The Sun Shine In. A Retrospective. Circle Culture Gallery, Los Angeles, 2014

• Corita Kent___Joyful Revolutionary, Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol, 2020

Literatur

• Karen M. Kennelly: Artikel Corita Kent; in: Susan Ware (Hrsg.): Notable American women. Bd. 5, Belknap Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts u. a. 2004.
• City, uncity. Poems by Gerald Huckaby, Pages by Corita Kent, Doubleday & Company, INC. Gardencity, New York 1969.
• Sister Corita: Footnotes and Headlines. A Play-Pray Book. Herder and Herder, New York 1967.

Filme

• Corita Kent: Die Pop – Nonne. Regie: David Gaillon. Arte, Frankreich, Deutschland, 2021.
• Rebel Hearts. Regie: Pedro Kos. USA, 2021.

Weblink

• Corita Art Center