Description

Das Ding an Sich/It's Me O LordRockwell Kent 1882-1971Rockwell Kent once explained, "It is the ultimate which concerns me, and all physical, all material things are but an expression of it." He was generally as intense and startling as his self-portrait suggests, seeking "the ultimate" in wild places like Greenland, where he composed this lithograph. Kent's illustrations and writings about these wilderness experiences made him incredibly popular in the United States between the world wars. His self-portrait's first title means "the thing in itself," which Immanuel Kant described as the opposite of a phenomenon-an observation with a purely intellectual existence. The second title comes from the African American spiritual lyric, "it's me, O Lord,/Standin' in the need of prayer." This, according to art historian Constance Martin, "suggests a sense of humility rarely if ever evident in Kent's typically egocentric conduct and the grandiloquence of much of his published prose."

Record Contributed By

National Portrait Gallery

Record Harvested From

Smithsonian Institution