Grant Wood: American Gothic
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/6565
This familiar image was exhibited publicly for the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago, winning a
three-hundred-dollar prize and instant fame for Grant Wood. The impetus for the painting came while
Wood was visiting the small town of Eldon in his native Iowa. There he spotted a little wood
farmhouse, with a single oversized window, made in a style called Carpenter Gothic. “I imagined
American Gothic people with their faces stretched out long to go with this American Gothic house,”
he said. He used his sister and his dentist as models for a farmer and his daughter, dressing them as if
they were “tintypes from my old family album.” The highly detailed, polished style and the rigid
frontality of the two figures were inspired by Flemish Renaissance art, which Wood studied during his
travels to Europe between 1920 and 1926. After returning to settle in Iowa, he became increasingly
appreciative of midwestern traditions and culture, which he celebrated in works such as this. American
Gothic, often understood as a satirical comment on the midwestern character, quickly became one of
America’s most famous paintings and is now firmly entrenched in the nation’s popular culture. Yet
Wood intended it to be a positive statement about rural American values, an image of reassurance at a
time of great dislocation and disillusionment. The man and woman, in their solid and well-crafted
world, with all their strengths and weaknesses, represent survivors.
Image One
Wood, the Midnight Run of Paul Revere, 1931, Oil on Masonite
In The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, the Midwestern painter
Grant Wood casts a magical spell on a familiar American story.
As scholar Wanda Corn has recounted, as a child, Wood had
been captivated by the tale of Revere’s journey through the
night from Boston to Lexington (the site of the opening skirmish
of the Revolutionary War) to warn the patriots of the
British advance. The precise details of this historical event
would have been indistinct, or perhaps unknown, to Wood
since, like most Americans of his day, he had learned the
legend from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
published in 1863:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
Wood was enchanted by the notion of a local hero bearing
urgent news, raising the alarm, and consequently attaining
immortality. He liked to imagine himself on just such a mission
in his home state of Iowa, galloping from farm to farm to warn
his neighbors of an impending tornado—“and being handsomely
praised when the storm was over and everyone had
been saved.” Wood never had the opportunity to become that
sort of hero, but he did become immortal through his famous
work American Gothic (1930)—painted just a year before he
completed The Midnight Ride—which dignifies a homely country couple on an ordinary
Iowa farm.
Image Two
Wood, Young Corn, 1931, Oil on Wood
Grant Wood was born on a farm near the small town of Anamosa, in 1891. By painting
simple scenes of the land and people he knew best, he helped create an important, allAmerican style of art. Grant Wood’s paintings show the love he had for the people and
customs of the Midwestern United States. Grant Wood particularly loved the farmland of
Iowa. While growing up, he enjoyed feeling the soft, warm soil between his toes as he
walked barefoot through the fields. In his painting Young Corn it seems like the round,
friendly hills are protecting the farmer and his children while they work in their fields.
Guiding Questions
1) Grant Wood was inspired by the Flemish Renaissance. This artistic style helped him
develop a very personal style of painting. Describe American Gothic and mention how
the historical art influence is seen in the painting.
2) Why do you think some critics saw his work as humorous and others saw it as a
reflection of American idealism? Identify characteristics of his work that would defend
both perspectives.
PERSONAL CONNECTION:
What art style influences your own work - how?