Gothic America is a painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Chicago Art Institute. Wood's inspiration came in his decision to paint what is known as the American Gothic House along with "the kind of person I have a crush on living in that house." He painted it in 1930, describing a peasant standing beside a woman who had been interpreted to be his daughter or his wife. The figures were modeled by Wood's sister, Nan Wood Graham and their dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby. She was wearing a colonial print apron that raised Americana in the 19th century, and he was holding a pitchfork. The plants on the porch of the house are the tongues of mother-in-law and the begonal beef, which is similar to the plant in Wood's 1929 portrait of her mother Woman with Plants .
It is one of the most familiar images in American art of the 20th century and has been parodied widely in American popular culture. The painting was shown in Paris at the Musée de l'Orangerie in its first show outside the United States on October 15, 2016 - January 30, 2017, and in London at the Royal Academy of Arts February 25 - June 4, 2017.
Video American Gothic
Creation
In August 1930, Grant Wood, an American painter with European training, was moved around Eldon, Iowa, by a young painter from Eldon, John Sharp. Looking for inspiration, Wood noticed the Dibble House, a small white house built in the Gothic style of Carpenter architecture. Brother Sharp suggested in 1973 that it was on this journey that Wood first sketched the house on the back of an envelope. Wood's earliest biographer, Darrell Garwood, notes that Wood "thought it was a borrowed form of pretense, structural absurdity, to place Gothic-style windows in a very fragile frame house." At that time, Wood classified it as one of the "cardboard frame houses on Iowa farms" and considered it "very easy to paint". After getting permission from the Joneses, homeowners, Wood sketched the next day with oil on cardboard from the front yard. This sketch features a steeper roof and longer windows with ogive that stand out from the actual house, a feature that eventually graces the final work.
Wood decided to paint the house together with "the kind of person I want to live in that house." He recruited his younger sister Nan (1899-1990) to model the woman, dressing her in a colonial apron that mimics Americana of the 19th century. The man was modeled on a dentist Wood, Dr. Byron McKeeby (1867-1950) from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Nan, perhaps ashamed of being described as a man's wife twice his age, told people that his brother had imagined the couple as father and daughter, rather than husband and wife, which Wood seemed to confirm in his letter to Mrs. Nellie. Sudduth in 1941.
The elements of the painting emphasize the vertical that is associated with Gothic architecture. The three-legged grass reverberates in the man's overalls, the Gothic window of the house, and the structure of his face. However, Wood did not add any numbers to his sketch until he returned to his studio in Cedar Rapids. He would not return to Eldon again before his death in 1942, though he asked for a photo of the house to finish his painting.
Maps American Gothic
Reception
Wood entered the painting in a competition at the Art Institute of Chicago. A judge regarded it as a "valentine comic", but the museum's patronesses persuaded the jury to award bronze medals and $ 300 cash prizes. The patron also persuaded the Art Institute to buy the painting, and remained part of the museum's collection. Images soon begin to be reproduced in newspapers, first by the Chicago Evening Post and later in New York, Boston, Kansas City, and Indianapolis. However, Wood received a reaction when the image finally appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. The Iowans are very angry at their portrayals as "reproachful, grim-faced, and puritanical Bible looters." Wood protested that he did not depict Iowan's caricature but portrayed his appreciation, stating "I must go to France to honor Iowa."
Art critics who have good opinions about the painting, such as Gertrude Stein and Christopher Morley, also consider the painting to be intended as a satire of rural small town life. This is seen as part of a trend towards increasingly critical portrayal of rural America, along the lines of Sherwood Anderson in 1919 Winesburg, Ohio, 1920 Sinclair Lewis Main Street, and Carl Van Vechten's 1924 The Tattooed Countess in the literature.
Yet another interpretation sees it as "an ancient mourning portrait... Tellingly, the curtain that hangs in the window of the house, both upstairs and down, is drawn closed in the middle of the day, the mourning habit in Victorian America, the woman is wearing a black dress under her apron, and glancing as if holding back tears One imagines her grieving for the man beside her... "The new wood was 10 years old when his father died and then lived for a decade. "above the garage provided for the hearse," so death is on his mind.
However, with the occurrence of the Great Depression, the painting was seen as a depiction of the spirit of a strong American pioneer. Wood helped with this transition by abandoning his Bohemian youth in Paris and grouping himself with populist Midwestern painters, such as John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton, who rebelled against the dominance of the East Coast art circle. Wood was quoted in this period as stating, "All the great ideas I've come to when I milk a cow."
Parody
The Depression-era understanding of the painting as a portrayal of an authentic American scene prompted the first famous parody, a 1942 photograph by Gordon Parks to clean the woman Ella Watson, who was shot in Washington, D.C.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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