Q. What's it called and what's its significance?
I have the feeling its iconic in some way. If yes than what?
I have the feeling its iconic in some way. If yes than what?
A. American Gothic
by Grant Wood, 1930
Oil on beaverboard
74.3 � 62.4 cm, 29¼ � 24½ in
Art Institute of Chicago
From
http://www.bookrags.com/research/american-gothic-sjpc-01/
This painting of a stern-visaged, tight-lipped, nineteenth-century country couple posed in front of their pristine farmhouse has become not only one of the most reproduced images in American popular culture, it has also virtually become emblematic of the moral fiber and simple virtues for which America is said to stand. Painted by Grant Wood in 1930, American Gothic has been interpreted both as homage to the artist's Midwestern roots and as slyly witty commentary on American "family values." After winning an important prize in 1930, American Gothic quickly became, as Robert Hughes notes, "Along with the Mona Lisa and Whistler's Mother � one of the three paintings that every American knows�. One index of its fame is the number of variations run on it by cartoonists, illustrators, and advertisers�. The couple in front of the house have become preppies, yuppies, hippies, Weathermen, pot growers, Ku Klux Klaners, jocks, operagoers, the Johnsons, the Reagans, the Carters, the Fords, the Nixons, the Clintons, and George Wallace with an elderly black lady." In the visual culture of the millennium, American Gothic remains the most potent and pervasive symbol of America's heartland mythology, as witnessed by its perpetual permeation into all areas of popular culture.
From
http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/American_Gothic
In 1930, Grant Wood, an American painter with European training, noticed a small white house built in Carpenter Gothic architecture in Eldon, Iowa. Wood decided to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." He recruited his sister Nan to model the woman, dressing her in a colonial print apron mimicking 19th century Americana. The man is modeled on Wood's dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
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 third 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 in New York, Boston, Kansas City, and Indianapolis. 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.
Art critics who had favorable opinions about the painting, such as Gertrude Stein and Christopher 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 towards increasingly critical depictions of rural America, along the lines of Sherwood Anderson's 1919 Winesburg, Ohio, Sinclair Lewis' 1920 Main Street, and Carl 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.
by Grant Wood, 1930
Oil on beaverboard
74.3 � 62.4 cm, 29¼ � 24½ in
Art Institute of Chicago
From
http://www.bookrags.com/research/american-gothic-sjpc-01/
This painting of a stern-visaged, tight-lipped, nineteenth-century country couple posed in front of their pristine farmhouse has become not only one of the most reproduced images in American popular culture, it has also virtually become emblematic of the moral fiber and simple virtues for which America is said to stand. Painted by Grant Wood in 1930, American Gothic has been interpreted both as homage to the artist's Midwestern roots and as slyly witty commentary on American "family values." After winning an important prize in 1930, American Gothic quickly became, as Robert Hughes notes, "Along with the Mona Lisa and Whistler's Mother � one of the three paintings that every American knows�. One index of its fame is the number of variations run on it by cartoonists, illustrators, and advertisers�. The couple in front of the house have become preppies, yuppies, hippies, Weathermen, pot growers, Ku Klux Klaners, jocks, operagoers, the Johnsons, the Reagans, the Carters, the Fords, the Nixons, the Clintons, and George Wallace with an elderly black lady." In the visual culture of the millennium, American Gothic remains the most potent and pervasive symbol of America's heartland mythology, as witnessed by its perpetual permeation into all areas of popular culture.
From
http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/American_Gothic
In 1930, Grant Wood, an American painter with European training, noticed a small white house built in Carpenter Gothic architecture in Eldon, Iowa. Wood decided to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." He recruited his sister Nan to model the woman, dressing her in a colonial print apron mimicking 19th century Americana. The man is modeled on Wood's dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
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 third 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 in New York, Boston, Kansas City, and Indianapolis. 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.
Art critics who had favorable opinions about the painting, such as Gertrude Stein and Christopher 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 towards increasingly critical depictions of rural America, along the lines of Sherwood Anderson's 1919 Winesburg, Ohio, Sinclair Lewis' 1920 Main Street, and Carl 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.
Powered by Yahoo! Answers
