Grant Wood American Gothic 1930. Painting “American Gothic”, Grant Wood - description. The plot of the picture and the history of creation

"American Gothic" - painting American artist Grant Wood, created in 1930. One of the most recognizable images in American art of the 20th century.

The painting depicts a farmer and his daughter against the backdrop of a house built in the Carpenter Gothic style. IN right hand The farmer has a pitchfork, which he holds in a tightly clenched fist, just like holding a weapon. Wood managed to convey the unattractiveness of father and daughter - tightly compressed lips and the father’s heavy, defiant gaze, his elbow exposed in front of his daughter, her pulled hair with only one loose curl, her head and eyes slightly turned towards her father, full of resentment or indignation. The daughter is dressed in a typical 19th-century American apron, and the seams on the farmer's clothing resemble a pitchfork in his hand. The outline of a pitchfork can also be seen in the windows of the house in the background. Behind the woman are pots of flowers and a church spire in the distance, and behind the man is a barn. The composition of the painting is reminiscent of American photographs late XIX century.

IN 1 In 930, in the town of Eldon, Iowa, Grant Wood noticed a small white house in the Carpenter Gothic style. 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 the model for the farmer himself was Byron McKeeby ( Byron McKeeby), artist's dentist from Cedar Rapids ( Cedar Rapids) in Iowa. Wood painted the house and people separately, the scene as we see it in the picture never happened in reality.

Wood presented American Gothic in a competition at the Art Institute of Chicago. The judges praised it as a humorous valentine, but the museum curator convinced them to give the author a prize of $300 and convinced the Art Institute to purchase the painting, where it remains to this day. Soon the picture published in newspapers in Chicago, New York, Boston, Kansas City and Indianapolis. However, after publication in a Cedar Rapids newspaper, there was a negative reaction. Iowans were angry at the way the artist depicted them. One farmer even threatened to bite off Voodoo's ear.)))

Grant Wood justified himself that he did not want to make a caricature of Iowans, but a collective portrait of Americans. Wood's sister was offended because in the painting she could be mistaken for the wife of a man twice her age.

Critics believed that the picture was a satire on rural life small American towns. However, during the Great Depression, attitudes towards the painting changed. It came to be seen as a portrayal of the unwavering spirit of the American pioneers.

According to the number of copies, parodies and allusions in popular culture American Gothic stands alongside such masterpieces as Leonardo's Mona Lisa and Munch's Scream.

The artist's sister and his dentist, from whom the painting was based.

The work of photographer Gordon Parks is considered the first parody.

Countless parodies have been created, here is the smallest part:

This painting is not known to many people in Russia, but throughout the world it is considered 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 work is performed with incredible precision the smallest details. But his most famous painting, American Gothic, has become a truly national landmark.

The story of the painting began in 1930 when the author accidentally saw a house in the neo-Gothic style in a small town in Iowa. Later he depicted a family who, in his opinion, could live in this house. It is noteworthy that the characters depicted have nothing to do with either this house or each other. The woman is the artist's sister. The man is his dentist. Wood painted portraits from them separately.
Why gothic? 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, but the lazy one didn’t 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 painting in one of the local newspapers, angry letters rained down on the editor. Residents of Iowa did not like the way the artist depicted them. They accused him of mocking the rural population. Despite all the attacks, the popularity of the film grew rapidly. And during the Great Depression, this picture actually became an expression of the national spirit.

A monument to the painting was erected in Chicago. Enterprising authors of sculptures released heroes in Big city, taking with him a suitcase.

The picture made the small town of Aldan in Iowa with a population of almost 1,000 people popular. The house still stands in the same place, attracting tourists from all over the world.

Parodies of the painting "American Gothic".

Many geniuses and creators in the field of art are not recognized by critics and society during their lifetime. Years later they begin to be understood and felt, firmly believing that the artist or poet had his own special view of things. That's when people begin to admire them, classifying them as incredibly talented people of his era. This is exactly what happened to Wood Grant, who painted his vision almost a hundred years ago way of life inhabitants of the New World in the film "American Gothic". He had enough complex artist, with its own character and handwriting.

A few words about the artist’s childhood

Many critics and art experts believe that before analyzing a painting, especially one that caused a huge public outcry, it is necessary to study a little about the creator of the masterpiece. This should be done only in order to understand the motives or message of the artist. Speaking about Wood Grant, whose painting “American Gothic” still causes controversy and certain disagreements among experts around the world, it is worth saying that early years his were unremarkable.

He was born on a small agricultural farm on the very outskirts of America. Besides him, there were two more boys and a girl in the family. The father of the family was distinguished by his hot temper and severity. He passed away quite early. Grant had a close and trusting relationship with his mother, perhaps because of this he grew up very sensitive, vulnerable and the most talented of all the children in the family.

Unrecognized genius

Having matured and chosen an artistic path for himself, Grant painted a sufficient number of paintings, but his work was not properly appreciated. He was not recognized in art, often not even taking his work seriously.

About the time in which the picture was painted

"American Gothic" by American artist Grant Wood was painted in 1930. This time was quite difficult for a number of reasons:

1. Firstly, in 1929, an economic crisis began in America, which, by the way, did not in the least hinder the rapid steps of the state in the field of construction and industry. New, hitherto unknown high-rise buildings were erected in the country. It was a period of novelty and technology.
2. Secondly, all over the world, fascism was gaining momentum as rapidly as industry. The new trend and ideology of Adolf Hitler were strengthened in the minds of people who strived for a perfect future.
3. To this list, perhaps, it is worth adding a fact that concerns the artist himself personally. By that time, Wood Grant had already lived for a sufficient amount of time in France and Munich, Germany. Some critics felt that these wanderings around the world added a lot to the film “American Gothic” from the European way of life.

After all of the above, you can try to get some idea about the artist, his character and life. Well, when this is done, it’s worth proceeding directly to the analysis of the painting “American Gothic”.

It's all in the details

You can analyze the canvas only if you describe it in detail. So, in the foreground two people are depicted: a woman and a man, who is apparently much older than her. Wood Grant has repeatedly said that he tried to show a father and daughter, but it is known for certain that he depicted his sister and dentist Byron McKeeby. According to the artist, the latter was quite different cheerful disposition. True, in the painting “American Gothic” he appears as a reserved person, if not stern. His gaze is directed straight into the eyes of the person looking at the canvas, and it is impossible to understand what will happen next: either he will smile or get angry. His face is drawn in such detail that you can make out every wrinkle, of which there are plenty.

The woman’s gaze is directed to the side, somewhere outside the picture. A man and his daughter stand in the center, with the woman holding the arm of an elderly man. He has a pitchfork in his hands, with its tips pointing upward, which he holds with a fairly strong grip. It seems as if the people depicted by Wood Grant are trying to protect their home, against which they are drawn.

The house is an old building in American style. Another nuance that is revealed upon closer examination: everything in the picture is made by human hands: the man’s shirt, the woman’s apron, and, indeed, the attic roof.

If you look beyond the background of the painting "American Gothic", it seems that Grant Wood did not pay enough attention to it. Trees are presented as geometric shapes and they are absolutely not drawn, generalized. By the way, if you look closely, there is a lot of geometry in the picture: a triangular roof, straight lines of windows, pitchforks that echo the piping on the man’s shirt.

The tones in which the canvas is painted can be described as quite calm. Perhaps this is all the description of the painting “American Gothic”, from which it becomes clear why many Americans saw themselves in it: almost all families living on both the western and eastern coasts of the continent had such houses.

Society assessment

The painting "American Gothic" created a sensation. Some were delighted, but there were also dissatisfied. Residents considered this depiction of their way of life to be a mockery of the artist, and one lady even threatened with physical violence against Grant Wood. She promised to bite his ear off. Many people accused the artist of antipathy to everything new, calling him a conservative and a hypocrite, because he depicted an old house on the threshold of a new civilization. The artist himself once said about his painting: “I tried to portray these people as they were for me in the life that I knew...”.

A century later

It is worth noting that after a while the picture still remains at the peak of popularity. They make parodies of her, admire her, but do not understand her. But all this did not in the least prevent “American Gothic” from becoming a kind of symbol of the way of life of those years. Nearly a century later, critics have been able to discern in it the unwavering spirit of American pioneers. Well, the last thing that needs to be mentioned: Grant Wood was able to “hook” a huge number of people with his masterpiece, forcing the public to discuss and argue about the painting “American Gothic”.

The movie is really important because it clearly shows the mentality of the country that made it. Cinema is a huge suitcase into which this or that state stuffs its views, values, cultural heritage, his ideals, fears, philosophy, theory and practice and much more, and sends this suitcase to different countries so that others can 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 precisely 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 are feelings of contradiction and, unfortunately, rejection.

Six people, six young people, arrive on the island, five of whom find a house and enter it. Not even five minutes pass before the guys turn on the gramophone, climb into someone else's closet, take out clothes, put them on and dance like that. When the owners appear, the red line of people's conversation becomes: if you want, we can pay for the inconvenience caused. This is the first point. “We are Americans. We can behave the way we want. Money saves us from any moral repentance and we solve all problems with money. We can smoke as much as we want and anywhere, because we Americans are the masters of everything.”

An elderly couple receives guests and feeds them. Imagine when you need to cook food not for two people, but for seven. That is, the housewife must prepare a lot of food to feed everyone. What do the guests thank you for? One girl, without asking permission, without doubting the reasonableness and correctness of her action, takes out a cigarette and lights it. 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 reprimands her, she leaves with a dissatisfied look. Americans cannot be reprimanded; they do not tolerate it. They are too important to be reprimanded. Yes, the girl leaves, but after a while she throws the cigarette butt in the yard. In the clean yard, which is so closely watched by the owners, the girl boldly throws the bull. Because she was offended and she will do minor mischief, because she is an American.

Go ahead. Everyone ate, everyone was full. What do young people do when they have been kindly fed? That's right, they go about their business. After all, we, Russians, still have morals somewhere, a rule of behavior when visiting. Especially if our transport broke down and people fed us and took us in. No one asked if they needed help with washing the dishes, or if they could provide help around the house. After eating, five healthy guys and girls go for a walk, sit in the gazebo, and 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 I help you?”, no, he calmly talked to his grandfather and left. A healthy guy who was fed and sheltered. Is this their mentality? Is this normal for Americans? I just can't understand this. And they don’t show us the Gopniks. No, all the people are adults, well dressed, and, apparently, educated. It turns out that one or another nationality can easily replace the lack of education and poor upbringing of another nationality? I imagine myself in their place. Really, after such hospitality and help, I won’t offer my help. Would Russian people really behave the same way? Yes, in Russia we have the Caucasus, Buryatia, and 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 cannot understand such disgusting behavior as the Americans demonstrated.

That is why from the first minutes I wanted all these young people to be beaten. I didn’t know what or who would kick them. The genre of the film is horror and thriller, but since six people are going somewhere in this genre, according to the law, they will be the ones who will be killed.

And everything would be fine if they were kicked and then the credits rolled, but the authors clearly wandered into last minutes 20 films. Twisted new story, absolutely miserable, stupid and naive. I barely made it through this round of events.

The film did not leave anyone indifferent. The film showed the nature of the average young American guy and girl. But it’s clearly not possible to call this film a masterpiece. The ending is poor.

“American Gothic” is a painting by American artist Grant Wood (1891-1942), known mainly for paintings dedicated to rural life in the American Midwest. The painting was created in 1930. She 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” stands alongside such masterpieces as “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci and “The Scream” by Edvard Munch.

The painting depicts a farmer and his daughter against the backdrop of a house built in the Carpenter Gothic style. In the farmer's right hand is a pitchfork, which he holds in a tightly clenched fist, just like holding a weapon.
Wood managed to convey the unattractiveness of father and daughter - tightly compressed lips and the father’s heavy, defiant gaze, his elbow exposed in front of his daughter, her pulled hair with only one loose curl, her head and eyes slightly turned towards her father, full of resentment or indignation. The daughter is wearing an apron that has already gone out of fashion.

According to the recollections of the artist’s sister, at his request, she sewed a characteristic edging onto the apron, taking 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 resemble the pitchfork in his hand. The outline of a pitchfork can also be seen in the windows of the house in the background. Behind the woman are pots of flowers and a church spire 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 1920s European New Materiality movement, which Wood became acquainted with during a trip to Munich.

In 1930, in Eldon, Iowa, Grant Wood noticed a small white house in the Carpenter Gothic style. He wanted to depict this house and the people who, in his opinion, could live in it. The artist's sister Nan served as a model for the farmer's daughter, and Byron McKeeby, the artist's dentist from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, became the model for the farmer himself. Wood painted the house and people separately, the scene as we see it in the picture never happened in reality.

Wood entered "American Gothic" into competition at the Art Institute of Chicago. The judges praised it as a “humorous valentine,” but the museum curator 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 published in newspapers in Chicago, New York, Boston, Kansas City and Indianapolis.

However, after publication in a Cedar Rapids newspaper, there was a negative reaction. Iowans were angry at the way the artist depicted them. One farmer even threatened to bite off Voodoo's ear. Grant Wood justified himself that he did not want to make a caricature of Iowans, but a collective portrait of Americans. Wood’s sister, offended that in the painting she could be mistaken for the wife of a man twice her age, began to argue that “American Gothic” depicts a father and daughter, but Wood himself did not comment on this point.

Critics such as Gertrude Stein and Christopher Morley believed that the film was a satire of rural life in small American towns. "American Gothic" was part of a growing trend at the time critical image rural America, which was also reflected in the books “Winesburg, Ohio” by Sherwood Anderson, “Main Street” by Sinclair Lewis and others. On the other hand, Wood was accused of idealizing antipathy towards civilization and denying progress and urbanization.

However, during the Great Depression, attitudes towards the painting changed. It came to be seen as a portrayal of the unwavering spirit of the American pioneers.
“All my paintings initially appear as abstractions. When a suitable design appears in my head, I carefully begin to give the conceived model a resemblance to nature. However, I am so afraid of being photographic that, apparently, I stop too early” G. WOOD.

Wood is one of the leading representatives of the movement in American painting called "regionalism". Regionalist artists sought to create truly American art as opposed to European avant-garde movements, promoting the idea of ​​national independence and cultural identity of America.

Text with illustrations http://maxpark.com/community/6782/content/1914271

Reviews

The picture is very, very ambiguous, and the fact that Americans quite sincerely love it is a manifestation of this. At first glance, this is a caricature (the “idiotic” faces of the couple, etc.). But: a caricature of whom? For farmers? But the farming class is the backbone, the core of American society. Americans will not laugh at the farmer. The day before Civil War The slave-owning planters of the South were proud that they knew how to plow and do other field work themselves.

This is probably why it became a symbol of the Americans. Perhaps this is not entirely clear to us. 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.