Masterpiece Story: American Gothic by Grant Wood

Under the blue sky of Iowa, a man and a woman stand solemnly in front of their house. They are farmers, as suggested by their clothing and the pitchfork the man is holding. This is Grant Wood’s American Gothic, one of the most iconic artworks in American culture. Let’s take look at the story behind this masterpiece.

Grant Wood (1891-1942) is one of the prominent figures of the American Regionalism movement. Along with Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry, Wood developed a realistic style of painting that became popular during the Great Depression (1929-1939). Throughout the hard times of the economic recession, the regionalists avoided modernism and abstraction. Instead, they focused on a highly detailed style. They favored rural and everyday subjects that told a story, exemplifying the Midwestern way of life.

The House

It all started with the house. Wood, born and bred in rural Iowa himself, spotted it in August 1930 while visiting the town of Eldon. Immediately, he made a sketch, intrigued by the presence of Gothic windows in such a small house. The building was created in the Carpenter Gothic style popular during the 1880s in the USA. It also inspired the name of the painting since Wood imagined the “American Gothic people”, as he deemed them, as the inhabitants of this house. What amused him was the absurdity of the architecture since these types of windows are usually seen in huge medieval Gothic cathedrals made of stone.

The Sitters

As for the actual people who posed for the painting, Wood persuaded his sister Nan to pose for the woman, and the family dentist, Byron McKeeby, for the man, which they did separately. The painter composed the whole piece in his studio. The pair in the painting are wearing clothes that evoke early 20th-century rural American life – overalls and a colonial print apron. Interestingly enough, Grant Wood asked his sister to make the apron herself, which she did using rickrack trim from her mother’s old dress.

Both their clothes and the poses prove that Wood didn’t intend to depict a modern American life but rather took a look back into the past. The stiff poses were meant to resemble “tintypes from my old family album” – as the artist put it¹. However, Wood was looking at the past in his brushwork as well. The highly detailed style of the painting, as well as the austere frontal pose of the figures, was probably inspired by Flemish Renaissance art. Wood studied this style while he was traveling in Europe in the 1920s.

The relationship between the man and the woman is still ambivalent. Many believe that it depicts a couple. The painter himself was quite ambiguous on this point, which resulted in an amplified interest in and publicity for the painting. However, according to Nan Wood Graham, the pair was envisioned as a father and a daughter. This is also confirmed in one of Wood’s letters.

The Reception

The painting was a submission to the annual exhibition of American paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930. It won the bronze medal, a monetary prize, and was bought into the museum’s collection, making Wood famous. After this success followed vigorous debate over the painting. On the one hand, several critics believed that it represented a satirical view of small-town America. On the other, many Iowans took offense at the stereotypical way Wood had painted them. The large age gap between the figures, which were believed to be a couple, was also part of the controversy.

Grant Wood himself rejected those accusations. For him, this was not a caricature but rather an appreciation of the rural American community. The Great Depression was a time when there was a demand for artworks that lifted and celebrated the American spirit. American Gothic was meant to represent hard-working Midwestern Americans. ‘All the good ideas I’ve ever had came to me while I was milking a cow’ – said Wood, proving his homage to the rural small-town life.

To this day American Gothic has been parodied countless times. This proves that the painting is still fertile ground for social commentary on anything American and that the debate on American values it inspired in 1930 is still relevant today.