"American Gothic" turns 75
deb...@comcast.net
Todd Dvorak
Associated Press
Friday, August 12, 2005
ELDON, Iowa -- Just before the photographer counts three, John Bruce
and his wife, Jennifer, glance over their shoulders, a final check on
their alignment with the white farmhouse behind them and its
unmistakable second-storey window.
They stand side by side, straight-backed and stiff-shouldered. Neither
offers the slightest crease of a smile -- until the camera's shutter
has snapped.
Like many other art and pop culture buffs who venture to this far-flung
Iowa town each year, the Bruces wanted their own shot at posing in
front of the house that inspired one of the most familiar -- and
lampooned -- paintings in the United States: Grant Wood's American
Gothic.
The portrait of rural farmers turns 75 this year.
And as it did from its debut, the painting and its two characters --
the stern, balding and bespectacled farmer with pitchfork in hand, and
the dour, straight-laced woman to his right -- remain as intriguing to
art critics, advertisers and the public as ever.
Over the decades, the painting has been ridiculed as an indictment on
rural life, hailed as a national symbol and cheered and jeered on its
artistic merits.
To John Bruce, whose fascination dates to the first time he saw it on a
cereal box in the 1960s, Wood's work conveys the beauty of wholesome,
hardworking, no-frills Midwestern values.
"Being from the Midwest myself, I think it displays pretty well some of
the character of the people," said Bruce, who travelled with his wife
from Rochester, Minn., to make this town of 3,038 a must-see summer
vacation destination. "It shows the kind of stern but hardworking
people that had to struggle to make it in their day, especially during
the Depression," he said.
But Wood's iconic painting proves, as it has since its unveiling in
1930, that interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.
Initially, the painting provoked hostility, particularly among Iowans
who viewed it as an attack on simple, small town life and values. In
letters to newspapers, Iowans reviled Wood and the painting. In a 1933
interview, Wood recalled one Iowa farm wife telling him "he should have
his head bashed in," according to a new book on Wood and the painting
by Harvard University professor Steven Biel.
"So many people saw it as far from a flattering portrait of rural farm
life in the early years," said Biel, author of American Gothic: A Life
of America's Most Famous Painting.
"Given what had happened in the Midwest at the time, with so much of
America putting it under attack as a bunch of religious fanatics and
proponents of ultraconservative politics, I think it's pretty
understandable why people reacted that way," he said. "Although, he
said later, he never meant to offend anyone or to portray a satire of
any kind."
But American Gothic has also become a vehicle for poking fun at
celebrities and peddling products from cereal to radios. Almost every
modern president has been portrayed with pitchfork in hand,
side-by-side with the first lady or juxtaposed with a chief political
rival.
The image has been spoofed by Saturday Night Live, promoted by S & H
Green Stamps as a symbol of thrift and appropriated recently by Paris
Hilton and Nicole Ritchie to hype their reality show, The Simple Life.
"Over time, it has become sort of an emblem for the nation," Biel said.
"It's always a status of a national symbol that it lends itself to
repeated parody."
Long fascinated by the arched Gothic windows of Europe's cathedrals,
Wood had told friends in 1930 that he was looking for a house with
similar windows as a backdrop for his next painting. He spotted the
small two-bedroom house that summer while driving with a student
through Eldon, about 80 kilometres southeast of Des Moines, and
sketched it that day.
Back at his studio in Cedar Rapids, Wood, then 39, took three months to
finish the work, a 76-centimetre-by-89-centimetre oil painting on
beaver board, a cheap product made from compressed wood pulp used then
to build walls. The figures were added separately. The model for the
farmer was Wood's dentist, Byron McKeeby; the woman was Wood's sister,
Nan.
"Grant assured us both that when he finished the painting, no one would
ever recognize us," Nan Wood Graham said in her book, My Brother, Grant
Wood.
"He told me to slick down my hair and part it in the middle, and asked
me to make an apron trimmed with rickrack, a trim that was out of style
and unavailable in the stores. After the painting made its debut,
rickrack made a comeback," she said.
Wood submitted the painting to the 43rd Annual Exhibition of American
Paintings and Sculpture, sponsored by the Art Institute of Chicago. The
exhibition chairman considered the work fluff, calling it a "comic
valentine."
But a trustee with a different opinion stepped in to prevent the
painting from being shipped back to Iowa, according to Biel. American
Gothic was awarded the exhibition's bronze medal. A $300 purchase price
ensured its spot among the museum's most prized acquisitions.
The painting will come home to Iowa in September for a special Grant
Wood exhibition at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.
Some critics have panned American Gothic as simplistic portraiture, but
Wanda Corn, a Stanford University art professor, believes it's
important to look deeper.
Corn says Wood captured the fondness many artists of the era had for
painting figures and exploring regional ideas with a solid grasp of
modernist, artistic principles.
"There is a lot more going on than you would think," said Corn, who has
written extensively about Wood's work. "If you take all those things
together, this becomes a real fabulous painting."
Brad Ferguson
<deb...@comcast.net> wrote:
> But American Gothic has also become a vehicle for poking fun at
> celebrities and peddling products from cereal to radios. Almost every
> modern president has been portrayed with pitchfork in hand,
> side-by-side with the first lady or juxtaposed with a chief political
> rival.
>
> The image has been spoofed by Saturday Night Live, promoted by S & H
> Green Stamps as a symbol of thrift and appropriated recently by Paris
> Hilton and Nicole Ritchie to hype their reality show, The Simple Life.
Somehow the AP missed the bit about how the painting is featured each
week in the opening credits of "Desperate Housewives," which I think is
a more current reference than Green Stamps, and a lot less skanky than
"The Simple Life."
--
FREE JUDITH MILLER
Louis Epstein
: Famous American Gothic marks 75th
:
: Todd Dvorak
: Associated Press
:
:
: Friday, August 12, 2005
:
: Back at his studio in Cedar Rapids, Wood, then 39, took three months to
: finish the work, a 76-centimetre-by-89-centimetre oil painting on
: beaver board, a cheap product made from compressed wood pulp used then
: to build walls. The figures were added separately. The model for the
: farmer was Wood's dentist, Byron McKeeby; the woman was Wood's sister,
: Nan.
Hard to believe that Grant Wood measured his canvas in centimeters.
-=-=-
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