Object Type: Prints

Creation Place: North America, United States

Medium and Support: lithograph on paper

Credit Line: Carleton College Art Collection, gift of Marilyn Stokstad, class of 1955

Accession Number: 2007.025

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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 fireùas one of the most basic of natural elementsùnot only destroys and consumes but also clears a space for future possibilities, renewed growth, and change.