Sister Mary Corita Kent Poster - Jesus Never Fails

Contains Beatles Quote "I get by with a little help from my friends" put in the pop art style of the Andy Warhol of religious art.

Jesus Never Fails is typical of Corita Kent's mid-1960s output. At this time, she was fully committed to Pop but still enveloped in the Immaculate Heart community and unwilling or unable to transparently produce protest art. However, her prints from this time obliquely suggested a kind of social protest against despair and disillusionment, encouraging hope and positive action.

A classic Pop arrangement, brightly colored blocks divide the space, in the way brand names, logos, and slogans divide billboards and packaging. The tightly controlled shapes are interrupted with snippets of phrases which cross the boundaries of squares and are, in some instances, written at a slight angle. The typography is interrupted, rotated, flipped, or cut up, making the viewer concentrate on working to excavate meaning from the words, a process distinctly different from the passivity of advertising.

Each phrase featured in the composition seems disconnected from the others: from the religious "Jesus never fails" and the demand "DO," to the inscription "It's not easy" and the Beatles lyric "I get by with a little help from my friends." A typically eclectic mix of references, when taken together they leave the viewer with a simultaneously vague but distinct message: life is hard and hope is not easy, but if one commits oneself to living actively, in awareness of the presence of God and friendship, hope can be found. When considered in the context of 1967 California, known for the Summer of Love, Jesus Never Fails becomes part of a wider call for focus on harmony and spirituality.

Size 10x14 inches

Published by United Church Press. United Church Press published two versions of this print. They are identical in every way except that some omit the copyright information. If you desire either version please message me upon purchase.

In excellent shape and will be shipped in a stiff cardboard photo mailer to prevent bending.

Corita Kent (1918-1986) was a pioneering, Los Angeles-based artist and designer. For over three decades, Corita, as she is commonly referred to, experimented in printmaking, producing a prodigious and groundbreaking body of work that combines faith, activism, and teaching with messages of acceptance and hope. Her vibrant, Pop-inspired prints from the 1960s pose philosophical questions about racism, war, poverty, and religion and remain iconic symbols of that period in American history.

A Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Corita taught at the Art Department at Immaculate Heart College from 1947 through 1968. At IHC, Corita developed her own version of Pop art, mixing bright, bold imagery with provocative texts pulled from a range of secular and religious sources, including street signs, scripture, poetry, philosophy, advertising, and pop song lyrics. She used printmaking as a populist medium to communicate with the world, and her avant-garde designs appeared widely as billboards, book jackets, illustrations, and posters. By the mid-1960s Corita and IHC’s art department had become legendary, frequently bringing such guests as John Cage, Charles and Ray Eames, Buckminster Fuller, Saul Bass, and Alfred Hitchcock. Dubbed the “joyous revolutionary” by artist Ben Shahn, Corita lectured extensively, appeared on television and radio talk shows across the country, and on the cover of Newsweek in 1967.

As a teacher, Corita inspired her students to discover new ways of experiencing the world. She asked them to see with fresh eyes through the use of a "finder," an empty 35mm slide mount that students looked through to frame arresting compositions and images. Seeking out revelation in the everyday, students explored grocery stores, car dealerships, and the streets of Hollywood. As Corita’s friend, theologian Harvey Cox, noted, “Like a priest, a shaman, a magician, she could pass her hands over the commonest of the everyday, the superficial, the oh-so-ordinary, and make it a vehicle of the luminous, the only, and the hope filled.”

Print is NOT a serigraph. This is an offset print reproduction of one of Sister Corita's serigraph prints. Published in 1968 by United Church Press.