CAA Limited-Edition Prints
Willie Cole, Bush Burn, 2002
Lithograph and metallic powder, 15 x 13½ in., edition of 60
Price
$750 $200
CAA individual and institutional members
$1,000 $300
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About the Work
Willie Cole works in a range of media to produce images that focus particularly on the metaphoric transformation of found objects and common subjects. His transformations can be spiritual, personal, or social in their significance and often show a highly charged critical point of view that takes on dominant economic and political structures in history and modern society. In this print, the artist responds to what he perceives as the excesses of US executive authority in the post-9/11 world as embodied in the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq. The burning bush is, of course, a reference to the moment in which Moses was commanded by God to rescue the Israelites from bondage in Egypt; here, though, the visual and conceptual pun on “bush” refers both to the godlike authority claimed by President George W. Bush as well as his pronouncement of apparently unassailable laws passed down to the populace as a whole.
The artist is also interested in using this religious symbol to play on the idea of Bush having a “burning” agenda that he pursues with utmost persistence. The iconic and symbolic nature of the image is reinforced through the iconographic references, such as the thirteen stars signaling a foundational moment of US political culture as well as the formal qualities of symmetry and clarity of color. The print also signals the artist’s interest in other kinds of transformations, given that fire—as one of the most basic of natural elements—not only destroys and consumes but also clears a space for future possibilities, renewed growth, and change.
Cole studied at the School of Visual Arts and the Art Students League, both in New York. He has held residences at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and has received many awards, including the 2006 David C. Driskell Prize from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Cole’s sculptures, installations, prints, and other artworks have been featured in many prominent exhibitions and in major collections of art, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has addressed questions of race, consumerism, class, gender, sex, and contemporary society in a number of important works.
