Story
Grant Devolson Wood
American artist. Depicted rural life in the American Midwest. His painting American Gothic (1930) is one of the most recognizable and parodied US works of the 20th century. Stored at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it was first exhibited and where its author studied.
Dusty side roads. Rare trees. The houses are white, low, standing far apart. Uncleaned areas. Overgrown field. American flag. This is what Eldon, Iowa, looks like - a city of a thousand people, where in 1930 an unknown Grant Wood, arriving at a small provincial exhibition, noticed in the distance the most ordinary rural house with an inappropriate pointed Gothic window on the second floor.
This house and this window are the only constant in the sketches for the painting, which was designed to portray the most stereotypical residents of the American Midwest.
No one knows why the original owners of the house decided to make the top window in the style of church architecture. Perhaps to bring tall furniture through it. But the reason could also be purely decorative: "Carpentry Gothic," as the provincial architectural style in the United States of the second half of the 19th century is called, had a penchant for simple wooden houses with a couple of cheap, meaningless decorations. And that's exactly what much of the United States looks like outside the city limits, wherever you go.
Interpretation
The picture itself is uncomplicated. Two figures - an elderly farmer clutching a pitchfork, and his daughter, an old maid in a Puritan dress, apparently inherited from her mother. In the background is a famous house and a window. The curtains are drawn - perhaps in honor of mourning, although at that time this tradition no longer existed. The symbolism of the pitchfork has not been clarified, but Wood definitely emphasizes it in the seam lines of the farmer's overalls (besides, the pitchfork is an inverted window).
Flowers that were not in the original sketches - geranium and sansevieria - traditionally denote melancholy and stupidity. They also appear in other Wood paintings.
All this plus a direct frontal composition refers both to a deliberately flat medieval portrait and to the manner of photographers of the beginning of the century to shoot people against the backdrop of their houses - with approximately the same stoic faces and a slightly indirect look.
Reaction
In the early 30s, the picture was perceived as a parody of the population of the Midwest. During the Great Depression, she became an icon of the authentic spirit of American pioneers. In the 60s it became a parody again and continues to be to this day. But parody is a genre isolated in time: it clings to the actual and is forgotten along with it. Why is the picture still remembered?
The United States has a complicated relationship with history. In large metropolises, there are usually only a few major events of relatively recent time in historical memory - for example, in New York it will be the arrival of immigrants on Ellis Island and 9/11. Even the Hudson is not remembered. On the frontier, by contrast, history is everywhere - Indian tribes, the Revolutionary War, civil, ethnic colonies, early horse-drawn roads, runaway missionaries - and these are the only places that are really rich in (albeit short) history.
In the gray area between the frontier and the metropolis, there is neither history nor culture. These are minor cities whose only function is to be inhabited. And that's exactly what Eldon, Iowa is, and that's why Wood was there in the first place. The exhibition, to which the artist came, set itself the goal of bringing art to the most popular masses, and the city was chosen accordingly - empty, boring, away from everything, with one street and one church.
And here you need to remember what Gothic is.
Gothic
Gothic arose in the 12th century from the desire of an abbot to restore the old church dear to his heart - in particular, to fill it with daylight - and quickly won the hearts of architects, allowing you to build higher, narrower and at the same time using less stone.
With the advent of the Renaissance, the Gothic style faded into the shadows right up to the 19th century, where it gained a second wind on the rise of interest in the Middle Ages and at the peak of the industrial revolution. It was then that the world was successfully inventing new modern problems, the consequences of which have not been resolved so far, and a look into the past tried to find some alternative - giving us not only the neo-Gothic, but also the Pre-Raphaelites, an interest in occult practices and - Puritan conservatism.
Gothic is not in stone. Gothic is a vision of the world.
In the canon of the late Middle Ages, she provided the necessary occasion for inspiration. Her world was still not about a person and did not belong to a person, but it was still beautiful. And all these stained-glass windows, columns and arches also gave off a cold, albeit inhuman, but still beauty.
So, puritan morality and the carpenter's style as its prophet - this is actually a belittled Gothic. This is a look at a person in the lens of double predestination, when the issue of his salvation is resolved from the very beginning, and this can be determined from the outside only by whether he fastens the topmost button on himself.
It's just that in the Old World, besides this button, he still had a culture. And New had nothing but potatoes and Indian graves. All that remains is to make a beautiful Gothic window on the second floor as the only sign of the continuity of this culture, now reduced to a pair of painted beams set at right angles.
Puritan morality and carpentry style is actually belittled Gothic.
American Gothic is a painting by the American artist Grant Wood (1891-1942), best known for his paintings of rural life in the American Midwest. The painting was created in 1930. It has become one of the most recognizable and famous paintings in American art of the 20th century.
In terms of the number of copies, parodies and allusions in popular culture, American Gothic ranks alongside such masterpieces as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch's The Scream.
The painting depicts a farmer with his daughter in front of a carpenter's gothic house. The farmer has a pitchfork in his right hand, which he holds in a tightly clenched fist as they hold a weapon.
Wood managed to convey the unattractiveness of the father and daughter - tightly compressed lips and a heavy defiant look of the father, his elbow exposed in front of his daughter, her hair pulled together with only one free curl, her head slightly turned towards her father and eyes full of resentment or indignation. The daughter is dressed in an apron that has already gone out of fashion.
According to the memoirs of the artist's sister, at his request, she sewed a characteristic edging on the apron, arguing it from her mother's old clothes. An apron with the same edging is found in another painting by Wood - "Woman with Plants" - a portrait of the artist's mother
The seams on the farmer's clothes are like a pitchfork in his hand. The outline of the pitchfork can also be seen in the windows of the house in the background. Behind the woman are pots of flowers and the steeple of a church in the distance, and behind the man is a barn. The composition of the painting is reminiscent of American photographs of the late 19th century.
The puritanical restraint of the characters is in many ways consistent with the realism characteristic of the European New Objectivity movement of the 1920s, which Wood met during a trip to Munich.
In 1930, in the town of Eldon, Iowa, Grant Wood noticed a small white carpenter's gothic house. He wanted to depict this house and the people who, in his opinion, could live in it. The artist's sister Nan served as the model for the farmer's daughter, and Byron McKeebe, the artist's dentist from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, became the farmer's model. Wood painted the house and people separately, the scene, as we see it in the picture, never happened in reality.
Wood entered "American Gothic" in a competition at the Art Institute of Chicago. The judges rated it as a "humorous valentine", but the curator of the museum convinced them to give the author a $300 prize and persuaded the Art Institute to purchase the painting, where it remains to this day. Soon the picture was printed in newspapers in Chicago, New York, Boston, Kansas City and Indianapolis.
However, after publication in the newspaper of the city of Cedar Rapids, a negative reaction followed. The people of Iowa were angry at the way the artist portrayed them. One farmer even threatened to bite off Voodoo's ear. Grant Wood justified that he wanted to make not a caricature of the inhabitants of Iowa, but a collective portrait of Americans. Wood's sister, offended that in the picture she could be mistaken for the wife of a man twice her age, began to claim that "American Gothic" depicts a father and daughter, but Wood himself did not comment on this moment.
Critics such as Gertrude Stein and Christopher Morley thought the painting was a satire of rural life in small American towns. "American Gothic" was part of a growing trend at the time of a critical depiction of rural America, which was also reflected in the books "Winesburg, Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson, "Main Street" by Sinclair Lewis, etc. On the other hand, Wood was accused of idealizing antipathy to civilization and denial of progress, urbanization.
However, during the Great Depression, the attitude towards the picture changed. It came to be seen as a picture of the unwavering spirit of American pioneers.
“All my paintings initially appear as abstractions. When a suitable design arises in my head, I carefully begin to give the intended model a resemblance to nature. However, I am so afraid of photographicity that, apparently, I stop too soon” G. WOOD.
Wood is one of the leading representatives of the movement in American painting called "regionalism". Regionalist artists sought to create authentic American art as opposed to European avant-garde currents, promoting the idea of national independence and the distinctiveness of America's culture.
Text with illustrations http://maxpark.com/community/6782/content/1914271
Reviews
The picture is very, very ambiguous, and the fact that the Americans quite sincerely love it is a manifestation of this. At first glance, this is a caricature ("idiotic" faces of a couple, etc.). But: a caricature of whom? For farmers? But the farmer class is the backbone, the core of American society. The Americans will not laugh at the farmer. On the eve of the Civil War, the slave-owning planters of the South prided themselves on their ability to plow and do other field work.
Perhaps that is why it has become a symbol of the Americans. Perhaps for us this is not entirely clear. But each country has its own history and its own priorities. At one time it became a reflection of the invincible spirit of the Americans. Sometimes the picture is criticized, and then it becomes popular.
Many geniuses and creators in the field of art are not recognized by critics and society during their lifetime. Years later, they begin to understand and feel, firmly believing that the artist or poet had his own special view of things. That's when they begin to admire, ranking among the incredibly talented people of their era. This is exactly what happened to Wood Grant, who almost a hundred years ago portrayed his vision of the lifestyle of the inhabitants of the New World in the painting "American Gothic". He was a fairly complex artist, with his own character and style.
A few words about the artist's childhood
Many critics and experts in the field of art believe that before analyzing the picture, especially the one that caused a huge public outcry, it is necessary to study the creator of the masterpiece a little. This needs to be done only in order to understand the motives or message of the artist. Speaking of Wood Grant, whose painting "American Gothic" still causes controversy and certain disagreements among the experts of the world, it is worth saying that his early years were unremarkable.
He was born on a small agricultural farm on the very outskirts of the very one in America. In addition to him, there were two more boys and a girl in the family. The father of the family was distinguished by a quick temper and strictness. He passed away quite early. Grant had a close and trusting relationship with his mother, perhaps because of this he grew up to be very sensitive, vulnerable and the most talented of all the children in the family.
Unrecognized genius
Growing up and choosing an artistic path for himself, Grant painted a sufficient number of paintings, but his work was not properly appreciated. He was not recognized in art, often without even taking his work seriously.
About the time in which the picture was painted
"American Gothic" by American artist Grant Wood was painted in 1930. This time was quite difficult for a number of reasons:
- Firstly, in 1929, an economic crisis began in America, which, by the way, did not in the least interfere with the rapid steps of the state in the field of construction and industry. New, hitherto unknown high-rise buildings were erected in the country. It was a period of novelty and technology.
- Secondly, all over the world, fascism was gaining momentum just as rapidly as industry. The new trend and ideology of Adolf Hitler was strengthened in the minds of people who aspired to a perfect future.
- In this list, perhaps, it is worth adding another fact that concerns the artist himself personally. Wood Grant by that time had already lived for a sufficient amount of time in France and German Munich. Some critics felt that these wanderings around the world added a lot to the picture "American Gothic" from the European way of life.
After all of the above, you can try to get some idea about the artist, about his character and life. Well, when this is done, it is worth transgressing directly to the analysis of the painting "American Gothic".
It's all about the details
The canvas can be analyzed only if it is described in detail. So, in the foreground two people are depicted: a woman and a man who, apparently, is much older than her. Wood Grant has repeatedly said that he tried to show the father with his daughter, but it is known for certain that he portrayed his own sister and dentist Byron McKeeby. According to the artist, the latter was distinguished by a rather cheerful disposition. True, in the painting "American Gothic" he appears as a restrained person, if not harsh. His gaze is directed straight into the eyes of the person looking at the canvas, and it is impossible to understand what will happen next: whether he will smile, or get angry. His face is drawn in such detail that you can make out every wrinkle, which abound on it.
The woman's gaze is directed to the side, somewhere outside the picture. A man and his daughter stand in the center, with the woman holding the older man's arm. He has a pitchfork in his hands, pointing upwards with its tips, which he holds with a fairly strong grip. It seems as if the people depicted by Wood Grant are trying to protect their home, against which they are drawn.
The house is an old American style building. Another nuance that is revealed upon closer examination: everything in the picture is made by human hands: the man’s shirt, the woman’s apron, and, by the way, the mansard roof.
If you pay attention to the background of the picture "American Gothic", it seems that Grant Wood did not pay due attention to it. Trees are presented in the form of geometric figures and they are absolutely not drawn, generalized. By the way, if you look closely, there is a lot of geometry in the picture: a triangular roof, straight lines of windows, pitchforks that echo the piping on the man’s shirt.
The tones in which the canvas is written can be described as quite calm. Perhaps this is the whole description of the picture "American Gothic", from which it becomes clear why many Americans saw themselves in it: almost all families living both on the west and on the east coast of the mainland had such houses.
Society valuation
The painting "American Gothic" made a splash. Some were delighted, but there were also dissatisfied. Residents considered such a depiction of their way of life as a mockery of the artist, and one lady even threatened physical violence against Grant Wood. She promised to bite off his ear. Many people accused the artist of antipathy to everything new, calling him a conservative and a hypocrite, because he depicted an old house on the threshold of a new civilization. The artist himself once said about his painting: "I tried to portray these people as they were for me in the life that I knew ...".
A century later
It is worth noting that after a while the picture is still at the peak of popularity. They make parodies of her, they admire her, they do not understand her. But all this did not in the least prevent "American Gothic" from becoming a kind of symbol of the way of life of those years. Nearly a century later, critics could see in it the unshakable spirit of American pioneers. Well, the last thing that needs to be mentioned: Grant Wood was able to "hook" a huge number of people with his masterpiece, forcing the public to discuss, argue about the painting "American Gothic".
Painting by Grant Devolson Wood (1891 - 1942)
"American Gothic"
2. Sources of inspiration for the artist were memories of childhood spent in the rural outback, as well as family albums with photographs in the Victorian spirit. The glasses of the man, the apron and brooch of the woman depicted in the painting were old-fashioned. The artist painted them after the example of those worn by his parents, who, like other inhabitants of the American provinces, were the heirs of the Puritan pioneers.
3. Models for the painting were 62-year-old dentist artist Byron McKeebee and his 30-year-old daughter Nan Wood Graham, although many believe that they were husband and wife. The dentist agreed to pose by chance and only on the condition that no one recognizes him, “I like your face,” the artist once told him. “It’s all like long straight lines,” but in the end, Wood did not keep his promise.
4. The scene depicted in the painting has never been in reality. The artist painted sketches from the models separately.
5. The picture not only won the competition, but also caused a great public outcry when several newspapers published it at once. The newspapers received a lot of letters and responses, often negative. “I advise you to hang this portrait in one of our good Iowa cheese factories,” Mrs. Earl Robinson, the farmer’s wife, ironically, in a letter to the Des Moines Register newspaper. “The expression on this woman’s face will definitely sour milk.” “I would like this envious lady (the author of the letter) to send me her photograph,” Nan Wood Graham did not remain in debt. "I already know where I'm going to put it..." The people of Iowa were unhappy with the way they were portrayed.
6. The carpenter's gothic house shown in the picture was built in Eldon, Iowa, in 1881-1882. This style was nicknamed Gothic for its use of neo-Gothic Victorian motifs. The red barn never existed in reality, the artist depicted it as a memory of his childhood, such a barn was painted on a cabinet made by the artist's father.
7. In the picture repeatedly - on the overalls and on the man's shirt, on the window frames, on the plant in the background, the drawing of the villas is repeated.
8. Grant Wood studied Northern Renaissance painting in Munich, which had a strong influence on his work.
9. The woman in the picture has one curl knocked out. In one of his letters, the artist wrote: "I let one strand break out to show, in spite of everything, the humanity of the character."
10. The son of rural workers in the Midwest, Wood said that he did not put into his plan either an ominous subtext or satire on the provincials, which critics and the public saw in the work: “I did not write satire,” Wood explained, surprised by the interpretations. “I tried to portray these people as they were to me in the life I knew.” But no matter how the picture was interpreted, it became a symbol of the typical American way of life of that time.
In Russia, the picture "American Gothic" is practically unknown, but meanwhile in America it is truly a national landmark. Written in 1930 by the artist Grant Wood, it still excites the minds and is the object of numerous parodies. It all started with a small house and an unusual window in the Gothic style…
American artist Grant Wood was born and raised in Iowa, he painted realistic, sometimes exaggerated, portraits and landscapes dedicated to ordinary Americans, rural residents of the Midwest, made with incredible accuracy to the smallest detail.
It all started with a small white rural house, with a gabled roof and a Gothic window, in which, apparently, a family of poor farmers lived.
This simple house in the city of Eldon, in southern Iowa, so impressed the artist and reminded him of his childhood that he decided to draw it, and along with those Americans who, in his opinion, could live in it.
Painting "American Gothic"
The picture itself is completely uncomplicated. In the foreground, against the backdrop of the house, an elderly farmer with a pitchfork and his daughter in a strict puritan dress are depicted; the artist chose a familiar 62-year-old dentist Byron McKeeby and his 30-year-old daughter Nan as models. For Wood, this picture was a memory of his childhood, also spent on the farm, so he deliberately portrayed some of his characters' personal items (glasses, apron and brooch) as old-fashioned, the way he remembered them from childhood.
Quite unexpectedly for the author, the picture won the competition in Chicago, and after it was published in the newspapers, Grant Wood immediately became famous, but not in a good sense of the word, but vice versa. His picture did not leave indifferent any person who saw it, and the reaction of everyone was extremely negative and indignant. The reason for this was the main characters of the picture, personifying, according to the artist, ordinary rural residents of the American hinterland. Too rude and unattractive looked menacing-looking farmer with a hard look and his daughter, full of resentment and indignation.
« I advise you to hang this portrait at one of our good Iowa cheese factories., - the wife of one of the farmers ironically in a letter to the newspaper. - The expression on this woman's face will definitely sour milk.».
This picture really frightened the children, they were afraid of a terrible grandfather with a terrible pitchfork, believing that he hid a corpse in the attic of his house.
Wood has repeatedly said that in his picture there is no mockery, no satire, no sinister overtones, and the pitchfork simply symbolizes hard farm work. Why did he, who grew up in the rural outback, who loves its nature and people, laugh at its inhabitants?
But, despite the endless criticism and negative attitude, Wood's picture became more and more popular. And during the years of the Great Depression, she even began to symbolize the national unshakable spirit and masculinity.
And the house depicted in the picture made famous the small town of Eldon, in which only about a thousand people live. Tourists from all over the world come to take a look and take pictures near it.
At the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century, interest in this picture sharply increased again, giving rise to a huge number of parodies on it. Here and ridicule using black humor, and parodies of famous characters with the substitution of the main characters of the picture, their clothes or the background against which they are depicted.
Here are just a few of them:
