Grant Wood American Gothic. The Story of a Masterpiece: Wood's "American Gothic" It's all in the details
Illustrator: Grant Dewolson Wood
Picture painted: 1930
Beaverboard, oil.
Size: 74×62 cm
History of creation
Critics such as Gertrude Stein and Christopher Morley thought the painting was a satire of rural life in small American towns. 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.
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.
Grant Wood "American Gothic"
Illustrator: Grant Dewolson Wood
Name of the painting: "American Gothic"
Picture painted: 1930
Beaverboard, oil.
Size: 74×62 cm
"American Gothic" is one of the most recognizable images in American art of the 20th century, the most famous artistic meme of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The picture with a gloomy father and daughter is overflowing with details that indicate the severity, puritanism and retrogradeness of the people depicted. Angry faces, a pitchfork right in the middle of the picture, old-fashioned clothes even by the standards of 1930, an exposed elbow, seams on the farmer's clothes that repeat the shape of a pitchfork, and therefore a threat that is addressed to anyone who encroaches. All these details can be looked at endlessly and cringe from discomfort.
History of creation
In 1930, in 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 McKeeby, 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.
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.
The movie is really important because it clearly shows the mentality of the country that made it. Cinema is a huge suitcase into which a state stuffs its views, values, cultural heritage, its ideals, fears, philosophy, theory and practice, and much more, and sends this suitcase to different countries for others to look into it and understand something about the sender. Now, if you approach the film "American Gothic" from this point of view. And the film itself invites you to approach it from this point of view, since the name of the sender is in the title itself. So, the mentality of the country is fully revealed. And in comparison with our mentality, Russian, Siberian, there is a feeling of contradiction and, unfortunately, rejection.
Six people, six young people, arrive on the island, five of whom find the house and enter it. Not even five minutes pass, when the guys turn on the gramophone, climb into someone else's closet, take out clothes, put them on and dance in this form. When the hosts show up, the red line of people's conversation becomes if you want, we can pay for the inconvenience caused. Here is the first point. “We are Americans. We can behave however we want. Money saves us from any moral remorse, and we solve all problems with money. We can smoke as much as we want, anywhere, because we Americans are the masters of everything.”
An elderly couple hosts guests and feeds them. Imagine when you need to cook food not for two people, but for seven. That is, the hostess must cook a lot of food in order to feed everyone. What are the guests grateful for? One girl, without asking permission, without doubting the reasonableness and correctness of her act, takes out a cigarette and lights up. Right at the dining table in the kitchen, where the owners sit, where the food is. This is fine? But she's American. She will smoke wherever she wants. When the owner makes a remark to her, she leaves with a displeased look. Americans are not allowed to make comments, they do not tolerate it. They are too important to be commented on. Yes, the girl leaves, but after a while she throws her cigarette butt in the yard. In a clean yard, which is so monitored by the owners, the girl boldly throws the bull. Because she was offended and she will do little dirty tricks, because she is an American.
Go ahead. Everyone ate, everyone was full. What do young people do when they are kindly fed? That's right, go about your business. Still, we Russians still have morals somewhere, the rule of conduct at a party. Especially if our transport broke down and people fed us and took us in. No one asked if they needed help washing the dishes, they could help around the house. Five healthy guys and girls after eating go for a walk, sit in the gazebo, smoke. And no one offered to help the owners. The owners are not young. The owners, who have a huge house on their shoulders, where they do everything with their own hands, because there is no electricity. When Jeff meets the owner who is sawing something, Jeff did not say “can you help?”, no, he calmly talked to his grandfather and left. A healthy guy who was fed and sheltered. Is that their mentality? Is this normal for Americans? I just can't understand it. And they don't show us gopniks. No, all the people are adults, well-dressed, apparently educated. It turns out that this or that nationality can easily replace the lack of education, poor education of another nationality? I imagine myself in their place. Really after such hospitality and help, I will not offer my help. Would the Russian people behave the same way? Yes, in Russia we have the Caucasus, Buryatia, Asian republics, where the laws of hospitality and the laws of etiquette are almost in the first positions. It is in our genes to visit each other and receive guests. And I can’t understand such disgustingness that the Americans demonstrated.
That is why from the first minutes I wanted all these young people to be poked. I didn't know what or who would kotsat them. The genre of the film is horror and thriller, but since six people are going somewhere in this genre, according to the law, it will be them who will be beaten.
And everything would be fine if they were pokotsali and after that the credits went, but the authors obviously went crazy in the last 20 minutes of the film. Twisted a new plot, absolutely miserable, stupid and naive. I barely endured this round of events.
The film did not leave indifferent. The film showed the nature of the average young American boy and girl. But this film is clearly not a masterpiece. Poor ending.
This painting is little known in Russia, but all over the world it is considered to be a classic of American art.
The author of the picture is Grant Wood. The artist was born and raised in Iowa, where he later taught painting and drawing. All his works are made with incredible accuracy to the smallest detail. But his most famous painting, American Gothic, has become a truly national landmark.
The history of the painting began in 1930 with the fact that the author accidentally saw a neo-Gothic house in a small town in Iowa. Later, he portrayed a family that, in his opinion, could live in this house. It is noteworthy that the characters depicted have nothing to do with this house or with each other. The woman is the artist's sister. The man is his dentist. Wood painted portraits from them separately.
Why goth? Pay attention to the attic window. In those days, it was popular among rural carpenters to weave various Gothic motifs into the construction of residential buildings.
Perhaps this is the most replicated image, only the lazy did not come up with a parody of this picture. However, at one time the picture was perceived differently. After the publication of a reproduction of this picture in one of the local newspapers, angry letters rained down on the editors. The people of Iowa did not like the way the artist portrayed them. They accused him of mocking the rural population. Despite all the attacks, the popularity of the picture grew rapidly. And during the years of the Great Depression, this picture actually became an expression of the national spirit.
A monument to the painting was erected in Chicago. Entrepreneurial sculptors released the heroes into the big city, taking a suitcase with them.
The painting made popular the small town of Aldan, Iowa, with a population of nearly 1,000. The house still stands in the same place, attracting tourists from all over the world.
Parodies of the painting "American Gothic".
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.
