- American Gothic
Infobox Painting|
title=American Gothic
artist=Grant Wood
year=1930
type=Oil onbeaverboard
height=74.3
width=62.4
height_inch=29¼
width_inch=24½
museum=Art Institute of Chicago "American Gothic" is a
painting byGrant Wood from 1930. Portraying apitchfork -holding farmer and a younger woman (imagined to be his wife or daughter) in front of a house ofCarpenter Gothic style, it is one of the most familiar images in 20th centuryAmerican art .Wood wanted to depict the traditional roles of men and women as the man is holding a pitchfork symbolizing hard labor. Wood referenced late 19th century photography and posed his sitters in a manner reminiscent of early American portraiture.
Creation
In 1930, Grant Wood, an American painter with European training, noticed a small white house built in
Carpenter Gothic architecture inEldon, Iowa . Wood decided to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house."Fineman, Mia, [http://www.slate.com/id/2120494/ The Most Famous Farm Couple in the World: Why American Gothic still fascinates.] , "Slate",8 June 2005 ] He recruited his sister Nan to model the woman, dressing her in a colonial print apron mimicking 19th centuryAmericana . The man is modeled on Wood's dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby fromCedar Rapids, Iowa . The three-pronged hay fork is echoed in the stitching of the man's overalls, the Gothic window of the house and the structure of the man's face. Each element was painted separately; the models sat separately and never stood in front of the house.Reception
Wood entered the painting in a competition at the
Art Institute of Chicago . The judges deemed it a "comic valentine," but a museum patron convinced them to award the painting the bronze medal and $300 cash prize. The patron also convinced the Art Institute to buy the painting, where it remains today. The image soon began to be reproduced in newspapers, first by the "Chicago Evening Post " and then inNew York ,Boston , Kansas City, andIndianapolis . However, Wood received a backlash when the image finally appeared in the "Cedar Rapids Gazette". Iowans were furious at their depiction as "pinched, grim-faced, puritanical Bible-thumpers". One farmwife threatened to bite Wood's ear off. Wood protested that he had not painted a caricature of Iowans but a depiction of Americans. Nan, apparently embarrassed at being depicted as the wife of someone twice her age, began telling people that the painting was of a man and his daughter, a point on which Wood remained silent. Art critics who had favorable opinions about the painting, such asGertrude Stein andChristopher Morley , also assumed the painting was meant to be a satire of rural small-town life. It was thus seen as part of the trend toward increasingly critical depictions of rural America, along the lines ofSherwood Anderson 's "1919 Winesburg, Ohio",Sinclair Lewis ' 1920 "Main Street", andCarl Van Vechten 's "The Tattooed Countess " in literature.However, with the onset of the
Great Depression , the painting came to be seen as a depiction of steadfast American pioneer spirit. Wood assisted this transition by renouncing his Bohemian youth inParis and grouping himself with populist Midwestern painters, such asJohn Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton, who revolted against the dominance of East Coast art circles. Wood was quoted in this period as stating, "All the good ideas I've ever had came to me while I was milking a cow." This Depression-era understanding of the painting as a depiction of an authentically American scene prompted the first well-known parody, a 1942 photo byGordon Parks of cleaning woman Ella Watson, shot inWashington, D.C. Parodies
: "Main article:
American Gothic in popular culture ""American Gothic" is one of the few images to reach the status of cultural icon, along with
Leonardo da Vinci 's "Mona Lisa " andEdvard Munch 's "The Scream ". It is thus one of the most reproduced — and parodied — images ever. Many artists have replaced the two people with other known couples and replaced the house with well known houses. References and parodies of the image have been numerous for generations, appearing regularly in such media aspostcard s,magazine s,animated cartoons ,advertisement s,comic book s, andtelevision show s. One of the most-seen depictions occurs in the movie version of the musical "The Music Man". At the climax of "Iowa Stubborn", two River City townspeople pose as the farm couple; framed within part of a discarded pool table crate. The credits ofDesperate Housewives feature another parody of the painting.Famously "American Gothic" was used in
Richard O'Brien 's "The Rocky Horror Picture Show " and is parodied by the two characters Riff Raff (Richard O'Brien ) and Magenta (Patricia Quinn ) who dress up as the man and the woman while standing in front of a white church. O'Brien's character even carries a pitchfork. Wood's "American Gothic" also hangs on the wall of the hall in the Rocky Horror House later in the film. It also briefly features in Rocky Horror's sequel "Shock Treatment " where it is hung in the wardrobe. Additionally, the title sequence to the American television show "Green Acres " also parodies the "American Gothic" painting.References
*cite book|title=American Gothic: A Life of America's Most Famous Painting|author=Steven Biel|year=2005|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|id=ISBN 0-393-05912-X
Notes
External links
* [http://www.artic.edu/artaccess/AA_Modern/pages/MOD_5.shtml About the painting, on the Art Institute's site]
* [http://slate.msn.com/id/2120494/ Slate article about American Gothic]
* [http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring05/005912.htm American Gothic: A Life of America's Most Famous Painting]
* [http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/americangothic/ November 18, 2002, National Public Radio “Morning Edition” report about “American Gothic” by Melissa Gray that includes an interview with Art Institute of Chicago curator Daniel Schulman.]
* [http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/americangothic/ June 6, 1991, National Public Radio “Morning Edition” report on Iowa's celebration of the centennial of Grant Wood's birth by Robin Feinsmith.] Several portions of the report focus on “American Gothic”.
* [http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/americangothic/ February 13,1976, National Public Radio “All Things Considered” Cary Frumpkin interview with James Dennis, author of "Grant Wood: A Study in American Art and Culture".] The interview contains a discussion about "American Gothic".
* [http://weirdovideotoo.blogspot.com/2007/06/american-gothic-cornflakes.html Clip of a 1960's cornflake commercial that parodies American Gothic ]
* [http://www.wapellocounty.org/americangothic/index.htm American Gothic House Center site]
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