maja lisa
engelhardt
at dca
by Robert Mahoney
Maja Lisa Engelhardt's "Burning Bush"
series involves two traditions of religious
painting. First, she tries to visualize a
difficult Biblical passage--Moses goes up
Mt. Horeb and finds "the bush was blazing,
yet it was not consumed." Like a
Renaissance painter, Engelhardt struggles
to convert a literary trope into an image.
The big challenge is how to paint a fire
that does not consume (most viewers will
know only Cecile B. DeMille's
visualization in "The Ten Commandments").
In her "Burning Bush" paintings Engelhardt
shifts from fiery to ethereal, from
consuming to veiled. Though the series as
a whole has a sort of Monet-with-his-
haystacks seriality to it, in truth it is
the struggle on a level beyond visual
impression which gives each painting
depth. The second tradition Engelhardt
deals with is the Romantic tradition of
the Natural Supernatural, where trees
and mountains became the evidence of
God's work. In diary entries included
in the dazzling catalogue that
accompanies the exhibition, Engelhardt
makes Thoreau-like notes of Nature in
Denmark, and twice records the
"transillumination" of trees or bushes
by the sun. Several personal photographs
of stray trees crowned with blinding
sunlight shows Engelhardt grasping at
the original miracle through suggestive
occurrences in nature. Which brings to
mind the aesthetic of reliquaries. Do
you remember in "La Dolce Vita" the two
children who claimed to see the Virgin
in a tree, rushing around confused in
the rain? Obviously, Fellini debunking
the hysteria of miracle worshippers.
And yet the most touching scene:
afterwards the crowd rushes the tiny
tree and strips it of its leaves
desparate for any souvenir and keepsake
of divine energy. A "cultus," servicing
and maintaining a miracle energy as
linked to a specific incident, is thus
born. Maja Lisa Englehardt's work is
most impressive when thought of in the
context of a "cultus" attempting to
keep the energy of the original Burning
Bush in the modern world.
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