It’s Me O Lord by Rockwell Kent

Autobiography of an artist, activist, atheist, socialist, and egotist

From the 1920s through the 1950s, Rockwell Kent was one of America’s best known artists. He is remembered for his landscape paintings and book illustrations, most notably the 1930 edition of Moby-Dick, and his artwork was also commonly seen in magazines and ad campaigns of his era. Over the course of his career, Kent wrote and illustrated several memoirs focusing on specific journeys or periods of his life. In 1955, however, he published a complete autobiography of his life up to that point, entitled It’s Me O Lord. In addition to being an artist, Kent was also a known socialist, atheist, and vegetarian, before any of those -isms were tolerated by mainstream America. The book is about these other aspects of his life just as much, if not more, than his career as an artist.

Kent was born to a rather privileged background, but he chose to live an austere and somewhat nomadic life in keeping with his socialist and artistic ethic. After recalling his education under painters like William Merritt Chase, Robert Henri, and Abbott Thayer, much of the book recounts Kent’s constant relocations from one locale to another. In almost every chapter he moves to a new state or country, builds a house, and paints pictures of the local landscape. Some of these travels he covered in books like Wilderness (about his time in Alaska), Voyaging Southwards from the Strait of Magellan (a journey to Tierra del Fuego), N by E, and Salamina (both about Greenland). Those interested in art might be disappointed to find that Kent talks more about building houses than he does about painting. As a socialist, he wants to depict himself not as an intellectual or aesthete but rather as a working man who is not afraid to get his hands dirty. At times Kent describes his family life as bordering on poverty, but it seems he always has wealthy friends to help him out when he’s in need, and ultimately his prodigious artistic talent leads to success. It’s Me O Lord contains hundreds of black and white illustrations from throughout Kent’s career as well as some color reproductions of his paintings.

As an artist Kent was a staunch realist, but as a writer he’s prone to romantic rhapsodizing. The convoluted Yoda-like syntax of each sentence needs to be unraveled before understanding. He also indulges in a lot of pretentious meta-commentary: “When writing an autobiography, one must . . .” Just write the book; don’t write about writing it; fifty pages of that could have been cut. And the ego on this guy! I don’t know if I’ve ever read an autobiography in which the author was so full of himself. Kent considers himself the greatest artist who ever lived, the truest socialist, and the best fighter, lover, and father. He never admits to doing anything wrong, and everyone else is always an idiot. At times his conceit comes across as childishly comic. The first time Kent confesses to cheating on his wife, the reader thinks, “My, how big of him to admit that!” By the third or fourth affair, however, one realizes that he is simply bragging about his conquests.

For a great artist who lived such an exciting life, It’s Me O Lord is a surprisingly dull narrative for much of its 617-page length. The final quarter of the book, however, delivers a significant escalation in interest. It is during these final chapters that Kent really delves into his activism as a socialist and the persecution he suffered for his beliefs during the era of McCarthyism. As the autobiography of an artist, It’s Me O Lord is really nothing to get excited about. As the autobiography of a socialist and freethinker, however, this is a valuable read for the perspective that Kent provides on the political climate of his times.
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Rockwell Kent illustration from Moby-Dick