To me, it's interesting that Mr. Wood intended the American Gothic couple to be father & daughter, as I never thought of the pair as anything but a married couple.
Thank you Paul, another excellent study. I think that Wood was painting the straight-backed, hard working, practical survivors that these people had to be during that era in their part of America. He admired them, i don`t think he was laughing at them, although he may have been amused by them ! Gertrude Stein just got out of bed on the wrong side that day...
It is likely that of all Grant Woods painting, only one was intended to be satirical, a parody. That painting is "Daughters of Revolution", my favorite Wood painting.
Excellent! I wish I had you as an Art History teacher in college! I wouldn't have fallen asleep in class so much! 45 yeas later I'm finally learning something!
I saw this painting in the 80’s on a family vacation. It was my son's favorite painting and I have a photo of him next to it. How wonderful to learn the back story. I have shared your video with my son. Thank you! ❤️ Shirley
This painting for me anyway, and over the years has said the same thing. I'm sure the artist wanted to represent the salt of the earth people who built America's heartland that produced food for everyone in the country. The Gothic window, the nicely pressed yet slightly worn clean clothing, and the serious facial affect tells the story of the hardship, the serious commitment to God and their survival, and to living a good Christian life. But mostly, the painter seems to be saying that the achievements of the pioneers and the farmers living through the depression were enormous, but only through many difficulties, and yet their legacy is the foundation, the cornerstone of America. Too bad this attitude no longer exists in the majority of people living in the US. However, I have to say that the farmers of Iowa are very hard working and impressive people in their own right. So some of what this painting represents still exists in part in the great American mid-west.
CiaoBella - I really like your interpretation and description of what you see. It's very thought provoking isn't it, like so many great works of art. 😊🖼
@CiaoBella, I agree with your interpretation and respect your ability to express these values. It doesn't hurt, too, that my dad's family were (and some still are) from Iowa. I grew up watching them during my summers and they exhibited a quiet dignity as they went about their duties to family, church, work and community. This caliber of human being is sadly fading fast.
Thank you Art History School - It is very fascinating to learn about this painting that I've seen so often w/o really knowing anything about it or the talented artist who painted it. Thank you!🎨⏳🏫
Perhaps is the same pattern on the dress and the curtains a homage to a fact of Midwest life in the 30s where folks would have worn homespun and even used the same bolt of fabric for several home needs
Excellent summary of Grant Wood and American Gothic. I love Grant Wood and this painting. You can see his studio and the largest collection of works in Cedar Rapids. Also at Iowa State University, Parks library has the largest Grant Wood murals. Really awesome to see in person.
I've watched most of your videos, thus far, and been delighted with EACH one. I stumbled into you during COVID lockdown and my life has been better for it ever since. You make me laugh and enlighten me with with tidbits I'd never would have known otherwise. Your coordinating outfits, backgrounds and other images are perfecto! I apologize for the latent post, but I hope it inspires you to continue. Thank you immensely.
Artist in School Sorry, I just noticed your reply. It was several years ago in, of all places, a museum in Worcester, Massachusetts...a rather seedy old burg. It’s about three hours from my home in northwestern Connecticut. The exhibit was spellbinding and I enjoyed it beyond words. It drew huge crowds which made me feel quite sad. I’ve always had the feeling he led a rather sad life and certainly didn’t receive the adulation he deserved. Btw, I love your channel and your cogent, in-depth analyses. Never miss a new one. Thank you for all your efforts! Much love from the US!
Great video!!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Thank you so much for giving us these insightful background info. regarding the painters’ lives; makes always more sense when analysing their paintings about where they got their inspirations from or whose work they got impressed mostly from. Somehow some of Grant’s preciseness in his farm landscape paintings reminded me of Henri Rousseau’s style. Not the colors, but the lines..borders of the figures..
Excellent documentary. Thank you for the proper pronunciation, it helps very much those like me for whom English is a second language and those hard of hearing :-)
I recognised the painting but never looked into the detail or the artist sir. Thank you for this little, all too brief exploration. You made me realise how everything in it is upright, unchanging and conservative. If I am merely repeating what you said in different words I apologise. I do mot want to infringe your copyright! Blessings and peace from North Yorkshire.
I am English too and think we are on the same wavelength. Woods paintings reflect (and I hope lampoon) a particular culture an ocean and most of a continent away from us. I dislike traditional thinking and attitudes as they bring about conformity and rigidity, and i believe that Woods felt the same way. That is what this painting is about. For me anyway, other opinions might vary.
Thank you so much sir, for your presentation. I have always seen similarities between this paintig and the van Eyck´s The Arnolfini Portrait. Now I know why!
Should you ever visit Cedar Rapids, Iowa visit the Studio where Wood lived for 10 years and where he created his great body of work, including American Gothic. The space was originally a dark nearly windowless hayloft in a carriage house which Wood transformed into a lovely Studio/Home, one of his most significant artistic accomplishments in my opinion. If you visit (its free) you might have me as your tour guide.
I think you are like me, not formally educated or following an academic path but just dipping into what we like and trying to learn, and enjoy, more about it. This is one of the things which brought my wife and I together, our combined book collections make up an eclectic home art library.
Nice video. Grant Wood is one of my favorite artists. The Whitney Museum in NYC had an exhibition of his work. It remains my favorite visit to that museum.
I always thought of this painting as an act of conservation, like painting a pair of dodos or a white rhinoceros. It's alive at the moment of portrayal but not for longer. If you look at them, at their faces... they're miserable and bored, with more in the past than in the future. I don't think he was trying to mock them but I don't see it as a praise either. Just a "look closely at them, they'll soon be gone".
It reminds me of the early photographs. People had to stand motionless for a bit due to a slow shutter. Curious if Grant was influence by the realism in photography too? There is definitely an emotional authenticity that is shown in their facial expressions. It’s not like the fake plastered smiles of so many portraits to follow.
Many thanks! I think it is a great painting but like the Mona Lisa its message is open to interpretation and many people take advantage of that fact. Cheers
I know those people. Lived here in Iowa my whole life and I know them. There is a grim determinism in those faces and that's how many rural midwesterners are correctly perceived. We aren't gregariously friendly like the folks of some regions. It's not that the locals are not friendly, it's just that they are somewhat insular and clannish. We know our own and tend to be suspicious of outsiders. BUT, we are also people who go out of their way supporting one another and people we don't even know. We hold the door open for people, we say please and thank you, we see someone on the side of the road with a flat and can't help but ask if they need help. We aren't all smiles and back-slapping expressions of warmth. We are mostly dour, church-going folk, who work hard, and keep to ourselves but are willing to give of ourselves to aid those in need. Whenever a horrific hurricane or string of tornadoes strike the mid-south or gulf coast...Iowans are among the first to head south to their aid...we know what it's like to be at the mercy of turbulent weather, and are quick to offer a helping hand. The same way that Iowans, newly a part of the union, were quick to volunteer during the Civil War...as a population, Iowa's contributions weren't as great as other, older Eastern states, but as a percentage...over 75% of men in Iowa went to fight in the Civil War, largely fighting in Sherman's army in the deep south. So even when Iowa was young, we gave our all to those in need. That's what I see when I see Grant Wood's American Gothic. I've seen that man...he comes into the convenience store to get some coffee in the morning, dressed in denim overalls. I've seen that woman in church, in school fundraisers, at town council meetings. They are all too familiar. They aren't happy, they are content. They aren't mean, they aren't selfish; they're practical, they'll give you a lift when you need it, they offer the hospitality of their home, they work hard, they support their schools, they support their country, they support their unions and their churches; they are suspicious of glad handing and are not easily fooled by swindlers and politicians. They are secure in their beliefs, and their values. Grant Wood grew up here too. Things have changed since he was here, but so many things are still the same.
Oh Matt. That's all so alien and horrible to me. Our cultures are sooooo different. Please don't be offended but I'm so glad not to be American or in USA. Your country does not project itself well in recent years so your nostalgia for the past is easily understandable.
Grant was an interesting guy. Could never decide if he wanted to be edgy and bohemian or down-home and folksy. He embraced and eschewed his origins at once. Oh well, it gave us some great art
It's quite amazing that a painting with not a single religious symbol depicted (the gothic window can be found in castles and town halls in Europe besides churches) is seen by some as presenting religious zealots. I agree that it's a wonderfully geometric painting, and that Wood was making it deliberately open to interpretation. The pitchfork is the master stroke here - on the one hand, it's an everyday tool for a farmer, but to be holding it when posing for a portrait is unexpected and disconcerting. It smacks of a militant kind of defiance - "Don't you dare mess with my way of life"
As an American, I have always thought, that American Gothic did capture the Midwest in an iconic way. I always felt that how serious his stated intentions were, his message was delivered rather ‘tongue in cheek’ as we say. Truly if he was satirizing us, he was satirizing himself, as well. His painting style was so serious, so regular, it can’t help but contrast with its subject matter.
I think it is more the opposite. I don't think he did deliver it 'tongue in cheek' I think he did it seriously, that's why east and west coast Americans satirized it so much.
I live in Missouri. He had definite stated stereotypical intentions in mind. The 'pretentious' window on the humble house. A romantic view of the stoic farmer. As played by a dentist. He caught something of the way of life here. His own stepping back into Flemish modes of expression, breaking with the modern trend. Go to any small town in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, you will see Grant Woods America today. The satire is so close to the truth. I love his work and equally amused by it. It is iconic, in a way that an American impressionist couldn't have been.
The jacket on the man is significant in my opinion. It’s an interesting type of formal work style. it was actually done at that time. I have old family pictures where the man is wearing almost a blazer over work clothes. Also I have a Soviet era painting of a farmer in the style of social realism where the farmer is wearing the same type of jacket. I’ve been to the house in Eldon as it’s not far from my family farm. Very close to the Missouri border. Beautiful hilly land but the soil tends to be sandy. Gothic houses still exist there. Really high population of Amish and Mennonites.
Another great piece! But now, the man looks so much like a dentist and not a farmer. Would you please check out the Dutch painter, Jan Mankes? Superb painter, also short lived. His wife was first woman to receive a doctorate. Thank you again.
Thomas Hart Benton, friend of both Wood and John Stewart Curry, would write in his book, "An Artist in America" (1968), pp. 314-321, that the three of them ". . .were very much apart of the idea that an indigenous art with its own aesthetics was a growing reality in America . . . we were alike in that we were all in revolt against the unhappy effects which the 1913 Armory show had had on American painting." THB continues to explain, in his book, their art aesthetics which came under jealous attack by the oligarchic "Art Establishment" of their day who promoted (THB words): ". . .studio experimentations with pseudo-scientific motivations suggesting that art was primarily a process evolution. This put inventive method rather than a search for human meaning of one's life at the center of artistic endeavor. . ." THB would continue: "It was against the general cultural inconsequence of modern art and the attempt to create by intellectual assimilation that Wood, Curry and I revolted in the twenties and thirties, and turned ourselves to a reconsideration of artistic aims. We did not do this by agreement. We came to our own conclusions separately, but ended with similar convictions that we must find our aesthetic values, not in thinking, but in penetrating to the meaning and forms of life as lived. For us, this meant American life and American life as known and felt by ordinary Americans. . .we wanted to find an opportunity for spectator participation. . .this public-minded orientation so offended those who lived above and believed that art should live above 'vulgar' contacts. The philosophy of our popularism was rarely considered by [them] . . . it was much easier to dismiss us." Wood would obtain a university-teaching position and, according to THB: "[he] was pestered almost from the beginning of his university career - why an Iowa small towner received world attention while they, with all their obviously superior endowments, received none at all." Left to the mercies of art journals, art professors, the museums, and the "now dominant internationalism of the high-brow aesthetics" who aimed to bury their art out of existence, Curry and Wood would meet a sad demise. Wood died in 1942 from liver cancer. He told THB that he wanted to change his name, go where nobody knew him, and start all over again with a new style of painting. Curry died slowly in 1946; he told THB that he "may have done better staying on the farm. No one seems interested in my pictures. Nobody thinks I can paint. If I am any good, I lived at the wrong time." Thought I would share this ~
Very interesting. In many ways because America is such a young country it was not surprising the Armory Show had such an impact. European art had been developing for centuries before America existed, so the conclusions European artists has come to by 1913 were centuries in the making and would have been a massive impact on American painting. Wood and others would assimilate or fight against it during the 20's and 30's many searching for ways of creating an 'American Art' with American values. Some argue it wasn't until the 1950's that American art, on the world stage, really came to the forefront.
If you look at the larger work of Grant Wood he did satire American life. It wasn't mean spirited though. Aside, I have always love how Grant painted trees. They have a strangeness to them that is personal as a fingerprint.
I always found this painting stern and perhaps a representation of oppression and hardship. The couple look unhappy like many couples that would have been forced to be married. Thanks for the explanation into the background. It's not a story I would have imagined.
Nice, The significance of the relationship may be harmony, cooperation, conflict, tension…The woman seems to be glancing at the man, but the man is gazing straight at me…
My mother, a native Iowan, found herself living in Cambridge, Mass in 1948. She had been informed that a colleague of her artist aunt had his paintings on display in Boston, and she was encouraged to go see them. While viewing American Gothic, she overheard two patrician women to the effect "do they really look like that out there?" "Yes, they do." The incident confirmed her aunt's understanding that American Gothic was a statement of an authentic American artist about genuine Americans, in contrast to the influences of European modernism "colonizing" American art and culture.
Yes, they are genuine Americans, but the name of the painting is a clue, in part, to the influences on Grant's painting, 'gothic' not only refers to the style of the architecture of the building - prevalent in Europe in the Middle Ages - in the window style. But also to the great admiration Grant had for the work of the medieval artist Albrecht Durer who influenced his style at the time. He had seen Durer's work during visits to Europe in the 1920's.
I don't think that Grant thought about Gothic. I believe he had a feeling about something in the world and that feeling created a picture in his head. I know these folk.
If Gertrude Stein were a consistent sort of lady, I'm sure history will unearth a similar sort of statement concerning F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."
I liken this painting winning 3rd place in an art contest to the legend of Charlie Chaplin winning third place in a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest. I’ll bet no one remembers the first or second place winners.
