Painting "American Gothic", Grant Wood - description. The story of one masterpiece: "American Gothic" by Wood Baba with a pitchfork

Grant Develson Wood(1891-1942) American painter. Known as an artist who worked in the genre of regionalism. He devoted most of his work to the rural areas of the Midwest. He was engaged in the creation of portraits, as well as landscapes, using grotesque forms to express and focus attention. Famous all over the world thanks to one of his works - " american gothic».

Grant Wood was born February 13, 1891 in Jones County, Iowa. Studied at the School of the Arts at the University of Chicago. He also made several trips to Europe to study painting styles and techniques. Most of all, Grant Wood was attracted by such styles in painting as post-impressionism, which later influenced the vision of the painter and all his work. Huge impact on American artist also produced the work of Jan van Eyck (1385-1390), examining the paintings of which he acquired a special ability to create clear, clear and realistic features and images. Thanks to his unusual technique, in which several styles and trends are involved at once, successfully combined with each other and giving the viewer a clarity of presentation, he became one of the most famous regionalist artists, whose work is well known today. Artists such as Thomas Garth Benton and John Stuart Carrey also worked in a somewhat similar technique.

Grant Wood during his life created a whole series of paintings that are known today to both connoisseurs of painting and art lovers. visual arts. Most famous painting artist became "American Gothic", which was written in 1930, and is currently located at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1932, Grant Wood founded the Stone City Art Colony, where artists lived and worked during the hard times known as the Great Depression. From 1934 to 1941 he was an art teacher at the School of Art at the University of Iowa. famous artist died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 50, February 12, 1942.

Artist Grant Wood paintings

Plot

Somewhere in the vastness of Iowa, a house is lost, the architecture of which is a classic example of carpentry Gothic. IN late XIX centuries, this style has formed the "face" of the Midwest. Wanting to somehow decorate their simple houses, the provincial craftsmen decorated them with elements in a neo-Gothic Victorian mood.

Against the backdrop of the house are a man and a woman. According to one version, this married couple, on the other - a daughter with a father. The artist's sister Nen especially insisted on the second. She agreed to pose, made an effort to prepare the right costume, and Wood ended up writing her out so that she looked much older than her age. In order to “cut off” a few years, Nan claimed in all interviews that the woman on the canvas is precisely the daughter, not the wife.

Photo source: wikipedia.org

Dentist Byron McKeeby posed for the man. The face of a 62-year-old man, according to Wood, seemed to consist of long straight lines. The good-natured McKeeby agreed to become a model, asking only to make sure that his acquaintances did not recognize him. But, alas, everything turned out quite the opposite.

Wood reproduced much in the appearance of the characters from childhood memories of his parents: his father had round glasses; the patch on the apron is taken from mother's old clothes; the brooch was bought by Wood in Europe for his mother; the spire of the church as a reminder that parents - exemplary Presbyterians - met in church.

Interestingly, in real life both models were cheerful, active, and even younger. But for history, they remained in the images that Wood invented for them. And yet the artist gave up. In one of his letters, he pointed out: "I let one strand break out to show, in spite of everything, the humanity of the character."

"Evaluation" (1931). Photo source: wikipedia.org

Wood borrowed his composition and technique from the masters of the Northern Renaissance, whose work he apparently saw during his trip to Europe. At the same time, Puritan restraint corresponds to the “New Materiality” popular in the 1920s.

Context

The painting was exhibited for the first time in the year of its creation, in 1930. It happened at the Art Institute of Chicago, where the canvas is to this day. In the year of his debut, the artist received a $300 prize for the painting. News about the exhibition was replicated " american gothic”, making it recognizable in every corner of the country. Almost immediately, the picture became a source for caricatures and parodies.

Some - for example, Gertrude Stein, one of the critics who immediately appreciated Wood's canvas - viewed the picture as a satire on the narrow-mindedness of the inhabitants one-story America. Others saw it as an allegory for the unshakable spirit of Americans whose spirit was not broken by the Great Depression. Wood answered questions about the essence of the canvas: “I did not write satire, I tried to portray these people as they were for me in the life that I knew.”

Tourists pose in front of the house depicted in the picture. Photo source: nytimes.com

The people of Iowa didn't like American Gothic. It was advised to hang her in the oil mill so that the milk would turn sour faster with such sour faces. Someone threatened to bite off the artist's ear.

The fate of the artist

Wood himself was one of those country folks from Iowa. His father died when Grant was 10 years old, so his mother gave him an apprentice quite early. Already in childhood, he mastered some of the techniques with which he later earned money: work on wood, metal, glass, etc.

Self-portrait. Photo source: wikipedia.org

Wood admitted that best ideas came when he was milking a cow. In essence, he was more of an artisan than an artist. After graduating from the University of Chicago School of Art, Wood made jewelry made of silver, and even a long trip to Europe could not radically change it creative way. Yes, he saw how the masters of the Northern Renaissance worked, and learned a lot from them; yes, he got acquainted with contemporary trends and trends in European art. But still he remained and deliberately strengthened the provincialism and realism of his work. Wood was one of the organizers of the movement of regionalism, popular in the Midwest. Community representatives chose scenes from the life of ordinary Americans for creativity.

Mass parody and duplication of Wood began after a gradual recovery from the Great Depression. "American Gothic" with its strictness, steadfastness and puritanism began to appear in the theater, cinema and even in pornography.

Sources:
Encyclopedia Britannica
Art Institute Chicago
The New York Times
Steven Biel

Photos for the announcement on home page and lead: wikipedia.org

Grant DeVolson Wood (1891-1942)- a famous American realist artist, or in other words - a regionalist. He became widely known for his paintings of rural life in the American Midwest.

First, a little about the artist himself. Grant was born to a farmer's family in a small town in Iowa. Unfortunately, for a long time he could not paint. His Quaker father - that is, a member of a religious Christian sect - had a negative bias towards art. Only after his death was Wood able to take up painting. He entered the School of the Arts at the University of Chicago. Then he made four trips to Europe, where he studied various directions for a long time.

His first works belonged to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. The most famous of them are Grandmother's house inhabit a forest (1926) and The Bay of Naples's View (1925).

Two absolutely various works impeccably executed in the presented style. If "Grandma's House in the Forest" is painted in sand colors and filled with light and warmth, then the second landscape literally blows cold. On the canvas, which the master painted in dark - black, blue and dark green - tones, trees are depicted bent under the wind. Perhaps, like other authors who paint in the style of post-impressionism and strive to depict the monumentality of things, Wood wanted to show the greatness of the storm, before which even trees bow.

A little later, the artist got acquainted with the painting of the German and Flemish masters of the 16th century. It was then that Wood began to paint realistic, and in some places even exaggeratedly realistic, landscapes and portraits. Regionalism, to which the master turned, is a direction, the main idea of ​​which is piece of art"essence" of the ethno-cultural region. In Russia, there is an analogue of this term - "locality" or "pochvennichestvo".

With the depiction of rural life in the American Midwest, many probably associate famous portrait women and men with pitchforks standing on the background of the house. And not in vain, because it was Grant Wood who wrote this. famous painting- "American Gothic" (American Gothic, 1930). It is unlikely that the artist could have imagined that his work would become one of the most recognizable and parodied in American art.

And it all started with a small white carpenter's gothic house, which he saw in the city of Eldon. Grant wanted to portray him and the people who might live there. The prototype of the farmer's daughter was his sister Nan, and the model for the farmer himself was the dentist Byron McKeeby. The portrait was put up for competition at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it remains to this day.

Painting by Grant Devolson Wood (1891 - 1942) "American Gothic"

2. Sources of inspiration for the artist were memories of childhood spent in the rural outback, as well as family albums with photographs in the Victorian spirit. The glasses of the man, the apron and brooch of the woman depicted in the painting were old-fashioned. The artist painted them after the example of those worn by his parents, who, like other inhabitants of the American provinces, were the heirs of the Puritan pioneers.

3. Models for the painting were 62-year-old dentist artist Byron McKeebee and his 30-year-old daughter Nan Wood Graham, although many believe that they were husband and wife. The dentist agreed to pose by chance and only on the condition that no one recognizes him, “I like your face,” the artist once told him. “It’s all like long straight lines,” but in the end, Wood did not keep his promise.

4. The scene depicted in the painting has never been in reality. The artist painted sketches from the models separately.

5. The picture not only won the competition, but also caused a great public outcry when several newspapers published it at once. The newspapers received a lot of letters and responses, often negative. “I advise you to hang this portrait in one of our good Iowa cheese factories,” Mrs. Earl Robinson, the farmer’s wife, ironically, in a letter to the Des Moines Register newspaper. “The expression on this woman’s face will definitely sour milk.” “I would like this envious lady (the author of the letter) to send me her photograph,” Nan Wood Graham did not remain in debt. "I already know where I'm going to put it..." The people of Iowa were unhappy with the way they were portrayed.

6. The carpenter's gothic house shown in the picture was built in Eldon, Iowa, in 1881-1882. This style was nicknamed Gothic for its use of neo-Gothic Victorian motifs. The red barn never existed in reality, the artist depicted it as a memory of his childhood, such a barn was painted on a cabinet made by the artist's father.

7. In the picture repeatedly - on the overalls and on the man's shirt, on the window frames, on the plant in the background, the drawing of the villas is repeated.

8. Grant Wood studied Northern Renaissance painting in Munich, which had a strong influence on his work.

9. The woman in the picture has one curl knocked out. In one of his letters, the artist wrote: "I let one strand break out to show, in spite of everything, the humanity of the character."

10. The son of rural workers in the Midwest, Wood said that he did not put into his plan either an ominous subtext or satire on the provincials, which critics and the public saw in the work: “I did not write satire,” Wood explained, surprised by the interpretations. “I tried to portray these people as they were to me in the life I knew.” But no matter how the picture was interpreted, it became a symbol of the typical American way of life of that time.