Wood, American Gothic
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- Опубліковано 1 кві 2012
- Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930, oil on beaver board, 78 x 65.3 cm / 30-3/4 x 25-3/4 inches (The Art Institute of Chicago) Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Dr. McKeeby was also my grandmother's dentist. Her sister, Miriam, married Dr. McKeeby's son, Byron, and gave me a strong connection with Grand Wood when I was growing up in South Dakota. A "claim to fame" that I am ever eager to share. :)
ajmittendorf That's actually pretty cool.
It's always interesting to hear people's different interpretations of art, whether painting, literature, lyrics or poems and it's best when an artist doesn't explain that much so we call wonder and think what _we_ think. I saw a comment elsewhere where the person read much to much into it, in my opinion. Grant Wood had sketched this real person's house and even asked for their permission to paint it. _Then_ he decided to paint people he thought would live in it. His dentist and sister really look like that and there's a photo of them standing next to the painting.
The Gothic style of the house is a big factor in that these simple, cheaply made houses had these European cathedral style windows in the Midwest of all places, and he did say that. I live in one of the early colonial states and we lived in a 200 year old farmhouse in New England; down the street from us is a gorgeous, very large colonial mansion with farmland behind it but those were obviously wealthy colonists. The simple farmhouses here are not like this but otherwise these people could have been New England Puritans and those who broke away from the Puritan (except overalls were not popular here) New England was all farmland then and they were wary of the newer immigrants coming in from non-Anglo Saxon countries. I see the parallel of the average farmer here that here except this isn't 200 years ago, however the attitudes of the early farmer are the same.
That being said, he found these kind of Gothic windows as kind of preposterous. It's like they were attempting to sophisticate these homes which is odd especially in such a rural place. In the background left you see what is presumably a church steeple jutting out of the trees. So we can get the idea that these are pious people too. The fun thing is not being sure of his expression like we see the Mona Lisa. When I was little and saw this in a book I first thought this was a photograph. The fuzzy background makes them clearer and provides depth of field. Luckily Grant did not say why he painted her looking off to something or maybe it's just a vacant look not really looking at anything but she's just thinking. Most presume to think she is his wife-we don't even know that for sure-that just because he used his sister as a model that doesn't mean she's his daughter.
I see his expression as more defiant and the pitchfork as if a weapon of "This is who we are" and "Don't tread on my land and our way of life.' But it does look like he might also be about to smirk. They are painted so tight and not even their entire bodies showing that's it's like they're confined in this tight space and perhaps their constricted, simple farm life? The fancy Gothic window versus a cheaply made, simple house. Our New England farmhouse was basically like that-a steep roof, straight lines, and a simple porch like this one except our windows were simple rectangular ones. The gossamer, patterned curtain in this window also appears to be an elegant touch while her apron is sturdy cotton. As you note, at this time the art deco Chrysler building was built and New York and environs, my state now had small cities and factories (my father was born in 1933). So there's this idea that New England's total farmland area had moved on (still plenty of farms though) while here they are like the still steadfast American and determined settlers...her Puritan style dress tight up to the neck, etc. and his jacket which looks disheveled and worn but a kind of other attempt at looking more sophisticated and or dignified like 'I'll put on a jacket for the photograph as a proper man might do.' (Sort of like how people dressed up for church services.)
I don't see this as satire like some thing because these _are_ the kind of people who built America and fed us besides the educated wealthy, indentured servants, and slaves. It also reminds me the big factor of what America was and is; the break from the Puritans communal land enclaves in New England to individualism and private property ownership (let alone separation of church and state.) Again, don't tread on my land, this is my land, the open frontier, and thus why immigrants came here-to have their plot of land and do what they want.
The viewer can see what they want. That's why it's good that there is ambiguity and what your own feeling is about Midwestern rural people. No interpretation is wrong or right. Once an artist releases their art, they no longer "own" it. I think other kinds of paintings help to have explanations such as why a one colored square painting is considered art when people say, "Oh, I could easily paint that too, I could easily throw paint around like Jackson Pollack."
I enjoy hearing these discussions and mentions of things such as the Chrysler building for perspective. Thank you, I watch your videos all the time and look forward to more. I wish you could get over to Far Eastern museums such as China, Japan or their famous architectural buildings and well-planned artistic gardens.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, we do by the way have some content on China and Japan. Have a look at the Smarthistory site for easier navigation: smarthistory.org
Beautiful surrealism
Another detail that deserves mention is the tip of what is likely a church steeple visible above the tree tops just left of the woman. Thus, religion enters the scene subtly.
“Oh, there's nothing halfway,
About the Iowa way to treat you,
When we treat you,
Which we may not do at all.
There's an Iowa kind,
A special chip-on-the-shoulder attitude,
We've never been without that we recall.”
- Meredith Willson
So much to find in what at first glance seems like a simple painting. Barely even gets into the symbolism, too. Domesticity and conservatism shown by the potted plants and her stray hair, the lack of contour in her body, etc. Lots of little things to find and keep it interesting.
There’s a very strong sense of surrealism
Das war sehr interessant. Thank you.
Fine video, thank you!
(The painting "Georg Scholz, Industrial peasents" is incorrectly named and in fact the painting "Kahlenberger Bauernfamilie" by Adolf Wissel, 1939)
dude, this is cool
i guess I am quite off topic but does anyone know of a good site to stream newly released tv shows online?
@Jacoby Alfredo lately I have been using FlixZone. You can find it by googling :)
I love this picture because of the movie.
Thanks for your interpretation. I just want to point out an error at 5:39, where the caption should read Adolf Wissel, Farm Family from Kahlenberg, 1939. Georg Scholz was, of course, declared an 'entarteter Künstler', and his Industrial Farmers appears at 4:03.
Thomas Hart Benton, friend of both Wood and John Stewart Curry, would write in his book, "An Artist in America" (1968), pp. 314-321, that the three of them ". . .were very much apart of the idea that an indigenous art with its own aesthetics was a growing reality in America . . . we were alike in that we were all in revolt against the unhappy effects which the 1913 Armory show had had on American painting." THB continues to explain, in his book, their art aesthetics which came under jealous attack by the oligarchic "Art Establishment" of their day who promoted (THB words): ". . .studio experimentations with pseudo-scientific motivations suggesting that art was primarily a process evolution. This put inventive method rather than a search for human meaning of one's life at the center of artistic endeavor. . ."
THB would continue: "It was against the general cultural inconsequence of modern art and the attempt to create by intellectual assimilation that Wood, Curry and I revolted in the twenties and thirties, and turned ourselves to a reconsideration of artistic aims. We did not do this by agreement. We came to our own conclusions separately, but ended with similar convictions that we must find our aesthetic values, not in thinking, but in penetrating to the meaning and forms of life as lived. For us, this meant American life and American life as known and felt by ordinary Americans. . .we wanted to find an opportunity for spectator participation. . .this public-minded orientation so offended those who lived above and believed that art should live above 'vulgar' contacts. The philosophy of our popularism was rarely considered by [them] . . . it was much easier to dismiss us."
Wood would obtain a university-teaching position and, according to THB: "[he] was pestered almost from the beginning of his university career - why an Iowa small towner received world attention while they, with all their obviously superior endowments, received none at all."
Left to the mercies of art journals, art professors, the museums, and the "now dominant internationalism of the high-brow aesthetics" who aimed to bury their art out of existence, Curry and Wood would meet a sad demise. Wood died in 1942 from liver cancer. He told THB that he wanted to change his name, go where nobody knew him, and start all over again with a new style of painting. Curry died slowly in 1946; he told THB that he "may have done better staying on the farm. No one seems interested in my pictures. Nobody thinks I can paint. If I am any good, I lived at the wrong time."
Thought I would share this ~
All this time, I assumed the woman in that picture was his wife. In my defense, she doesn't look any younger than the man standing beside her.
Around 2 min 50 sec, Dr. Harris suggests that being artistic is a feminine quality and not a masculine one.
I find that a strange and sad analysis of what it means to be a man.
I was presenting his father's view of masculinity - not mine! :)
Beth's meaning was particular to the artist's very specific biography, not a broader statement. Context is important.
The narrators shamefully, sadly, dance around, ignore, Grant Wood's being a gay man, and the great impact it had on the course of his life.and his art. Wood struggled with his sexuality in the context of America's intolerance of homosexuality, during Wood's life time. Excellent biography sets the record "straight"-Grant Wood: A Life,” by R. Tripp Evans, a professor of art history at Wheaton College in Massachusetts". Your sexuality has a great impact your life, Grant Wood was no different.
@@oldgrannywheels The father of the painter, not her father.
ouai tout pareil
IMO Wood meant to show his own upbringing too along with all the memes of the time. The daughter represents Wood himself to some extent. Stern, close-minded, religious father with a gay son. Not a good environment for the son. The pitch fork reinforces the "my way or the highway" mentality of the dad. That's why she's staring off the canvas, she wants to get away.
Niezwykłe malarstwo. Historia Ameryki w pigułce... Krystyna Laura