Forest Path 1963

George Bunker created this color print, titled "Forest Path," sometime in the mid-20th century. It is hard to look at this landscape without thinking of the abstract expressionists, whose work often represented the raw and emotional experience of modern life. This work engages with the post-war tension between abstract art and representational art. It is a print, which implies some level of mass production. In America at this time, there were many debates about how the institutions of art, like museums and galleries, could promote democratic values, and how art could be available to ordinary people. Bunker’s artistic exploration of a public space, the forest, makes this concern even more clear. To understand this work better, we might look at writings by art critics like Clement Greenberg, or even at the membership records of the artist's cooperative print shops in the area. Only by doing so can we understand the meaning of art as something that is contingent on social and institutional context.