— American
Gothic _ American
Gothic _ American
Gothic (1930, 74x62cm) _ Regionalism in American painting developed
at the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929. Exclusively Midwestern
in origin, Regionalism portrayed American life as simple and rural, in direct
contrast to the urban-based Realist paintings that had dominated the American
art scene since the turn of the century. Unlike Realism, Regionalism left
no room for social criticism. So went the theory. In reality, this may not
have always been so. Since first shown at the Art Institute of Chicago in
1930, Grant Wood's American Gothic has been fodder for speculation.
In one camp were those who believed the painting was a celebration of "American"
values; in the other were those who saw it as a satiric critique of the
selfsame thing. The pair's dour expressions led many outside the Midwest
to believe that Wood, a self-proclaimed Regionalist, was poking fun at rural
life. Wood himself denied this in some interviews, but in others hinted
that there were indeed some satiric elements present. (He wouldn't say which
elements those were.) Wood's subjects spurred much of the debate. Was the
pair a farmer husband and wife, or a father and daughter? Many Iowa farmers'
wives objected to what they perceived as a negative portrayal, writing letters
of complaint to the artist. Wood later revealed that the models were his
30-year-old sister and their 62-year-old family dentist. The subjects' motivations,
even when considered as father and daughter, are unclear: The man may be
a farmer holding a pitchfork, nothing more than a piece of farming equipment.
Or he may not be a farmer at all, but a preacher, perhaps, jealously guarding
his daughter from male suitors. Critics who interpret the woman as his daughter
have often assumed that she was a spinster -- but just what kind of spinster
is left to the imagination. Some see the stray curl at the nape of her neck
as related to the snake plant in the background, each one symbolizing a
sharp-tongued "old maid." Or the curl may be a sign that she is not as repressed
as her buttoned-up exterior might indicate.
— The
Birthplace of Herbert Hoover, West Branch, Iowa (1931, 75x101cm) _ The
notion that anyone can grow up to become president is one of the United
States' most beloved and enduring myths. Herbert Hoover rose from humble
beginnings in a small midwestern town to become the 31st president of the
United States. The precise linear patterns and close attention to details
in this painting are hallmarks of Grant Wood's Regionalist style.
— The
Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1931) _ A year after American Gothic,
Wood painted The Ride of Paul Revere, which makes no attempt at
historical accuracy — for example, eighteenth-century houses surely would
not have been so brightly lit. The picture has a dreamlike sense of unreality.
The bird's-eye view makes the setting look like a New England town in miniature.
Note the geometric shapes of the buildings and the landscape (even the treetops
are perfectly round); the precisely delineated, virtually unmodulated light
emanating from the buildings and raking across the foreground; the distinct,
regularized shadows; and the way in which the forms in the darker background
are almost as clear and visible as those in the brightly lit foreground.
With his clean line and his even, unerring hand, Wood has thrown the scene
into high relief, heightening reality so as to make it almost otherworldly,
a quality that differentiates him from his fellow Regionalists. His precision
evokes the work of eighteenth-century American limners.
— Woman
with Plant (1929, 52x45cm) _ Encircled by a frame of his own making,
this portrait of Grant Wood's mother is one of his first works in the Regionalist
style for which he became famous. Unlike earlier works which were either
locales far from his roots or locations unspecified altogether, this can
only be Iowa. Gone are the visible brushstrokes and the dappled sunlight;
they are replaced with an incredibly smooth surface and a new solidness
to his trees, hills and figures. Wood paints his mother as a symbol for
all pioneer women and tells her story through the use of painstaking details
such as her weathered hands, her wedding ring and the hardy plant she holds
[this plant looks to me like the plant called “Mother-in-Law's Tongue”
for its sharp-pointed leaves. Was Wood aware of that?]. She is so much a
part of the land behind her that her eyes are the same color as the sky,
her hands are the same color as the corn and her apron is the same color
as the rolling hills.
— Young
Corn (1931, 60x75cm) _ Painted the same year as American Gothic,
this landscape was painted as a memorial to a teacher from Wilson School
in Cedar Rapids and is an excellent example of Wood's mature vision of rural
Iowa. The high horizon line provides ample room for Wood to explore various
textures, giving the viewer a sense of the richness and productivity of
the land; the message is that Iowa is a place of peace, prosperity and order.
The stylized trees and crop furrows are classic Grant Wood; a detail of
this painting was used for the Iowa Sequicentennial Commemorative stamp.
— Spring
Turning (1936) _ Grant Wood, along with Thomas Hart Benton and John
Steuart Curry, was a major US Regionalist painter. Spring Turning
has been widely reproduced and is considered one of Grant Wood's masterpieces,
second only in importance to his celebrated American Gothic. Grant
Wood studied at the Academie Julian in Paris and made several trips to Europe.
He returned to his hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa where he found the source
of inspiration for his entire artistic career. Spring Turning evidences
that, like artists or seamstresses, farmers make abstract art out of their
fields. In Spring Turning farmers guide horse-drawn plows to fashion
the earth's surface into a gigantic quilt. The vast distances suggested
in this picture are a result of the immense scale of the landscape in relationship
to the figurative elements, e.g. the farmer and his horse-drawn plow, the
cattle on the hillside. Grant Wood explained, "The rhythms of the low hills,
the patterns of crops upon them, the mystery of the seasons, and above all,
a feeling for the integrity of the ground itself -- these are my deep rooted
heritage."
— Arnold
Comes of Age (1930, 68x58cm) _ What time of year is it--on the left
side of the painting? And on the right side of the painting? There is more
here than meets the eye! Arnold Comes of Age conveys quite convincingly
the traditions of Flemish and late quattrocento portraiture into a US idiom.
It was painted in 1930, the same year he completed American Gothic,
the work which, more than any other, established the artist's style and
regionalist identity.1
Arnold Comes of Age suggests some
of the lessons Wood absorbed in Europe. This work portrait of the artist's
young friend Arnold Pyle places the subject in the immediate foreground,
centrally before a landscape filled with allegorical detail.. Next to the
right elbow of this thin, pensive young man, a moth, symbol of metamorphosis,
displays patterned wings. In the landscape beyond Arnold, symbolism underscoring
the principle of change continues. Beneath a tree in startling pink foliage,
are two young bathers. One stands on the bank of a river that flows across
the middle ground of the work; the second figure — rather like a trecento
painting in which the same character is shown in sequential actions —
has already entered the water.
To the left of the canvas stands another
deciduous tree, so placed that only a few of its leaves are visible. These,
however, are not pink but green. Beyond this tree and across the river,
two shocks of corn stand in bright sunlight. On the right side of the painting,
however, the field shows only neat rows of stubble. In the background are
two trees, nearly perfect oval masses of foliage; these, however, are not
in fall colors, but in the greens of summer. Thus in planes from foreground
to background, and in 'panels' at the right and left of the subject, the
bathers and the contrast of seasons underscore the passage of time. As the
title accurately reports, this work is not simply a depiction of the artist's
friend, but an allegorical portrait of Arnold Pyle's transition from adolescence
to adulthood. It is a rendering that is not at all satiric, unlike a number
of Wood's paintings, but an empathetic representation of a young man who
gazes fixedly not at the viewer but, by implication, at his own future. |
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