It's Crowded in Here! Part II. Art Talk with Robert Bunkin

Painting crowds continues to challenge artists from the 19th century to the present. The pomp and ceremony of public spectacles: parades, racetracks, concert halls, city streets, political demonstrations, parties, anywhere that attracts masses, are fodder for the imagination. The Belgian painter, James Ensor made a satire on the hypothetical reception of Christ into his nation’s capitol, where a carnivalesque throng of politicians, military bands and even death overwhelms Christ’s appearance. George Bellows shows us the crowded living conditions on New York’s Lower East Side in 1913, and Lee Krasner’s Little Image Paintings of the late 1940s offer abstract visions of density.

Robert Bunkin is a painter, curator, art historian and educator, with a BS from CUNY and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. He has taught art history and studio art in several NYC art schools, universities, colleges and museums.

James Ensor, Christ’s Entry Into Brussels in 1889, 1888, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

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