Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). View source
American Gothic
Grant Wood · Early Modern (Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism)
- Artist
- Grant Wood (1891–1942)
- Date
- 1930
- Dimensions
- 78 x 65.3 cm
- Medium
- Oil on beaverboard
- Location
- Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, United States
American Gothic shows a stern farmer holding a pitchfork and a woman standing beside him in front of a white wooden farmhouse with a pointed Gothic window. It has become one of the most famous and most parodied images in American art.
A closer look
Wood saw the small house in Eldon, Iowa, and imagined 'the kind of people I fancied should live in that house'. The models were his sister Nan and his dentist, Byron McKeeby. The vertical lines are repeated everywhere: the prongs of the pitchfork, the stitching of the man's overalls, the window, the long faces. The woman, often taken for the farmer's wife, was intended as his daughter. Viewers have read the painting both as a satire of narrow-minded rural life and as a celebration of the steadfast pioneer spirit; Wood himself insisted it was affectionate.