Walt Kuhn, born Brooklyn, NY 1877-died - Kit Kat Skelter Pagan Revel - 1913 - T-Shirt

This design reproduces Walt Kuhn's 1913 linocut print, a kinetic scene of performers and patrons caught mid-motion at the Kit Kat Club.

Visual Elements & Composition

Kuhn made the print as a linocut on paper, so the image is built from carved, graphic lines rather than soft tonal shading. The figures crowd the frame and seem to spin through one another, with the energy of the room carried by movement and repetition. The composition has no single still focal point, which is why the scene reads as a whole crowd rather than a portrait.

Meaning & Symbolism

The title's "Pagan Revel" points to ritualized abandon, the uninhibited nightlife of pre-war Manhattan where vaudeville, cabaret and modern spectacle blurred the line between audience and performer. Kuhn was a member of The Eight and a key figure in the 1913 Armory Show, which brought European Modernism to American audiences that same year. Through a single nightclub moment, he turned entertainment into a study of the performer's psychology and the search for authentic expression in an industrializing city.

Wearing the Revel

A tee carries its artwork across the chest and moves with the wearer, so the revel stays in motion as you walk through a room. Up close, the carved line work rewards a second look, and from across a room the crowd still reads as one swirling mass. The shirt puts a 1913 Kit Kat Club scene into everyday circulation, linking a Smithsonian American Art Museum artwork to the present day.