Untitled 

This untitled print was made by Albin Brunovsky, a Slovak artist, in what was then Czechoslovakia. The surreal image presents a woman, but with a landscape or mindscape in place of her hair. Brunovsky spent his career working in a communist country, and there are interesting associations to be made between that fact and this image. The woman’s expression is neutral, but she appears to be burdened by the landscape on her head. Is she weighed down by the demands of her country? Or, is this a comment on the psychological weight of inhabiting any landscape? Brunovsky was a professor, and therefore was part of the institutional structure of art in his country. But his work is more poetic than dogmatic. As historians, we can research not only Brunovsky’s biography but also the cultural history of Czechoslovakia in order to interpret the image more fully. The meaning of art is contingent on social and institutional context.