New Book Explores Grant Wood's American Gothic

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Grant Wood's 1930 painting American Gothic, a realist depiction of a somber rural couple in front of a modest white house, has become an iconic image on par with works like Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch's The Scream. U.S. art historian Wanda Corn explores its cultural history in her new book, The Couple with the Pitchfork: American Gothic from Easel to Icon.

Corn, a professor emerita of art history at Stanford University, stated she has observed the painting's transformation into the“iconic 'couple with the pitchfork'” over six decades. According to publisher Princeton University Press, her book, which draws from an“immense archive of reimagined couples,” offers crucial insights into the forces that turned an image with humble origins into a global icon with reach far beyond the art world.

The painting's sitters were Wood's 30-year-old sister, Nan Wood Graham, and his 62-year-old dentist, Byron McKeeby. Corn recounts an anecdote about the two men's shared humor, noting,“The two men shared a sense of humour, often chuckling over their 'bridge for a bridge' exchange; the dentist had provided the artist with a dental bridge and Wood paid him with a painting of a Paris bridge.”

A widespread misconception is that the couple in the painting are married; however, according to Wood's sister, they represent a father and his daughter. Corn clarified,“In Wood's mind, the two people in front of the house represented a father and his aging daughter, a spinster, living in small-town America.” She noted that Wood and his inner circle consistently described them this way.“Yet when the painting went out into the world, not one person saw the couple as a parent and child, nor did they see them as from a small town... this is one of the best examples in the history of art of how an artist's intentions in a work can differ from the public's reception of a painting.”

Corn herself initially believed the figures were a married couple. She recalled an instance from the 1970s when she posed with her husband for a feminist artwork by Keith M. Jones Sr, titled Joe and Wanda Corn, Holiday Card (1975), under the same assumption. However, when she later met Wood Graham, the artist's sister corrected her, stating,“They're not a couple. It's a father and daughter.”

Despite its fame, American Gothic and Wood's achievements as an Iowa-based artist faced early criticism. Art historical texts initially overlooked him, with H.W. Janson's A History of Art (1962) only including the work in its seventh edition, published in 2006. Corn's analysis of such texts, she said, demonstrates“how passive-aggressive the coverage of American Gothic was in this literature.” The critical response to a 1983 Wood exhibition curated by Corn was also harsh. A Wall Street Journal article in May 1983 labeled it the“Great Grant Wood Redemption Campaign” and quoted a prominent art dealer who said,“Flush it down the drain. It's just cornball, provincial, nationalistic propaganda and it has nothing to do with art!”

Corn's 1983 exhibition, Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision, debuted at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and toured to venues including the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Yale University Press published an accompanying book. The exhibition's final stop at the de Young museum in San Francisco featured the 1983 front cover of the gay magazine Frontiers, which Corn referred to as the“first gay Gothic” work displayed in a major museum.

Corn also addresses the artist's sexuality, a topic that has received increased scrutiny in recent years. She noted that Wood is now perceived as a more complex and tragic figure than previously understood. She credited art historians Tripp Evans and Sue Taylor with significantly contributing to recent psychosexual interpretations of Wood's life and the“uncovering of his homosexuality.” Corn stated,“I can see his struggles constantly,” but also added that many found him“boundless fun to be with, lovable and endlessly creative, not dark and gloomy.” She advocated for a more balanced view of the artist.

The book also explores how American Gothic was integrated into art history and popular culture through various reinterpretations, such as Mario Piperni's Obama Gothic (2012), which features Michelle and Barack Obama in front of the White House, and Barry Kite's photocollage Gothic Wave (2010), inspired by Hokusai's 19th-century woodblock print. Corn reflected on the evolution of her research, saying she“could not have written the book I wrote now back then [in 1983] because I didn't have the raw data.” She added that she lacked understanding of the image's episodic uses for everyday and political events, and had no sense of how computers would transform it into a widely accessible resource. The book, published by Princeton University Press, is 312 pages and costs $49.95 in hardcover.

We previously reported:

Art historian Wanda Corn's new book explores how Grant Wood's“American Gothic” transcended its Midwestern roots to become a global icon over five decades.

Source: The Art Newspaper

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