On to February. I think I said I'd do more with art this year, and this is the first of a series of diaries that will discuss a particular piece of art, the way we (well, by WE I mean Ed Tracey and myself) would describe a particular song if we were discussing it in detail. There are three (forgive me for using this word this way) iconic pieces of American art. I've already discussed one of them in a Top Comments diary about the painter James Abbott McNeil Whistler, and today I'll discuss the second. This will be more about the specific work of art than the Whistler diary was. I know you'll recognize it.
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This is, of course, American Gothic, painted by Grant Wood in 1930, after he returned from Paris and the Netherlands. As the Art Institute of Chicago observes:
This familiar image was exhibited publicly for the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago, winning a three-hundred-dollar prize and instant fame for Grant Wood.
The painting has resided at the Art Institute of Chicago since it was first painted (of course, it has been loaned out for retrospectives and the like), and I'm pretty sure you know the story of how the painter put it together. The house came first. In a 1933 interview, Wood had this to say:
I saw a trim white cottage with a trim white porch - a cottage built on several Gothic lines. This gave me an idea. The idea was to find two people who, by their severely straight-laced characters, would fit into such a home. I looked about among the people I knew around my home town, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but could find none among the farmers -- for the cottage was to be a farmer's home. I finally induced my own maiden sister to pose and had her comb her hair straight down her ears, with a severely plain part in the middle. The next job was to find a man to represent the husband. My quest finally narrowed down to the local dentist, who reluctantly consented to pose, I sent to a Chicago mail order house for the prim, colonial print apron my sister wears and for the trim, spotless overalls the dentist has on. I posed them side by side, with the dentist holding stiffly upright in his right hand a three-tined pitchfork. The trim white cottage appears over their shoulders in the background.
When the picture was printed in the newspapers, I received a storm of protest from Iowa farm wives because they thought I was caricaturing them. One of them even threatened, over the telephone, "to come over and smash my head."
Ambiguity, ambiguity, ambiguity. Wood finally had to say they weren't husband and wife, they were father and daughter. Some critics hated it, but the ones who liked it placed it in contemporary culture alongside the literature of the period (especially Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis [most notably
Main Street]) as a work of unflattering realism.
Here we have the models for the painting standing next to the painting (a little meta for tonight):
Incidentally, that's not a three-tined pitchfork, it's a hayfork. This painting is NOT meant to be satirical, incidentally, and, by the time Wood died in 1942 of pancreatic cancer, it was seen as an unironic representation of rural midwestern life. As the Art Institute says:
The man and woman, in their solid and well-crafted world, with all their strengths and weaknesses, represent survivors.
And then, this most familiar image began to work its way into popular culture. The first, I guess, tribute to the painting was created by the African American photographer Gordon Parks in 1942; it was, in fact, his first professional photograph.
Parks posed the cleaning woman Ella Watson in front of an enormous American flag hanging in the Farm Security Administration building in Washington, D.C, and, although the caption in the archive of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information reads
Washington D.C., Government Charwoman, Parks called it
American Gothic.
Several years later, Meredith Willson wrote a musical about turn of the century Iowa called The Music Man. Since it's about Iowa, Iowa's most famous painting had to appear in it. It did so on stage in a number called "Iowa Stubborn" and they kept it for the movie (and this is from the 1962 movie with Robert Preston and Shirley Jones). The bit is around 3:20:
And from that use of the image on stage, popular culture generated a panoply of parodies. The parodies even have their own website, and I've curated a selection of images from the site. First, the image is used in political cartoons on occasion. Here's Herblock of the Washington Post on Reagan's farm policies:
Here's Mike Luckovich of the
Atlanta Constitution on the 2012 Iowa Caucuses:
And here we are discussing marriage equality:
In popular culture, well, you might think the image is the most familiar of American images (and it's entirely possible that it IS), because, well, every television program connected with rural family life has had the stars get up in American Gothic dress or at least pick up a hayfork.
The Beverly Hillbillies, for example, in 1963.
Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor, the stars of
Green Acres (1965):
The Muppets - Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy - from
Miss Piggy's Treasury of Art Masterpieces from the Kermitage Collection(1984):
I'll spare you the Beavis and Butthead version, but I just CANNOT resist the Paris Hilton/Nicole Ritchie poster for
The Simple Life:
Note that this version couldn't even get the hayfork correct.
In politics, the Johnsons were parodied in 1964, and, since then, every presidential couple has shown up in some media vehicle or another Photoshopped into American Gothic. Here are the Obamas:
Finally, here's something that will have special resonance for us here at Top Comments. Pinterest led me to
Worth 1000, a creative contest site, which produced this:
As I think we know, this is an age in which anyone who knows how to use photoshop can create any image he or she wants to create. (I started what would have been a LONG digression about Walter Benjamin's essay
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction but it was too obscure and too meta [as if most of this HASN'T been meta], but maybe for another diary.) There's a LOT more of these, but that's what the google is for if you want to delve further. Next American painting? Edward Hopper,
Nighthawks, (1942).
I had an absolutely terrific source for this diary: Steven Biel, American Gothic: A Life of America's Most Famous Painting (2005). I thought I'd have time to do more with Grant Wood's gayness, but I've been much too distracted by my own during this intersession break.
And now for the stuff that makes this Top Comments:
TOP COMMENTS, February 5, 2014: Thanks to tonight's Top Comments contributors! Let us hear from YOU when you find that proficient comment.
From a2nite:
In Tom Rinaldo's diary yesterday explaining why Bridget Kelly did what she did IF Christie isn't lying, Marnie1 explained how Christie is trying to achieve plausible deniability.
From
mikejay611:
I would like to nominate this statement about life and people by Alyosha Karamazov from CityLightsLover's birthday message to William Burroughs as a Top Comment. I just think the statement is perfect in every way.
From
sfbob:
In today's frontpager by Jed Lewison on how very difficult the House is finding it to raise the debt ceiling, JeffW manages to get in a zinger (Star Trek reference included) without even any actual text.
From
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
In Laura Clawson's front-page diary about Republicans using a deceptive website to mislead voters into thinking they're donating to Democrat Alex Sink, here4thebeer coins the perfect one-word description.
From your intrepid diarist,
Dave in Northridge:
In ExpatGirl's diary about Clay Aiken's run for Congress, Vita Brevis ties it to the Superbowl and gets it exactly right.
Flagged by Clive all hat no horse Rodeo, ZedMont provided a very succinct summary of the Nye-Ham debate described in SocioSam's diary.
TOP MOJO, February 4, 2014 (excluding Tip Jars and first comments):
1) Yes you can add something to it, you can help by ontheleftcoast — 170
2) Another thing the USPS should get involved in by Hannibal — 160
3) It's a thinkless job, but somebody has to do it. by The Marti — 110
4) It really should be seen by millions. by LaFeminista — 106
5) We need a media shield law, ASAP! by Trix — 106
6) also Notary signature/stamp by DEMonrat ankle biter — 103
7) "American" is not a nationality by grannycarol — 97
8) My favorite response to "were you there?" by NE2 — 85
9) People Retiring in these Years Are Mostly by Gooserock — 85
10) My son enjoyed this debate. by mickT — 81
11) It's desparation by John Chapman — 81
12) I think it should be pointed out that... by madmsf — 78
13) we need democrats by Laurence Lewis — 75
14) It's not NYT Jackie's job to debunk lies by FishOutofWater — 73
15) Why? Has Someone Come Up With a Way We by Gooserock — 73
16) The USPS would LIKE to do more things like this by Lashe — 72
17) I read your diary by turkmen — 72
18) This is amazing. She's a brave woman by coquiero — 71
19) Indians 101 by Ojibwa — 69
20) Reince Priebus is making Michael Steele look like by implicate order — 68
21) You should have watched it... by kdnla — 67
22) I'd remind the haters by Joieau — 65
23) my son is an addict too by mntleo2 — 65
24) No by mickT — 64
25) It's so disheartening to see what by coquiero — 64
26) She woke up and decided she hated Fort Lee by Inland — 64
27) E Pluribus Unum. by lexalou — 63
28) agreed by kdnla — 62
29) Mostly, I don't discuss politics on FB, though by commonmass — 62
30) The war on teachers by Sandino — 62
For an explanation of How Top Mojo Works, see
mik's
FAQing Top Mojo
TOP PHOTOS, February 4, 2014: Enjoy jotter's wonderful PictureQuilt below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo. Have fun, Kossacks!