Saturday, December 20, 2014

American Gothic - Grant Wood


We just learned about the painting Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer.

Another famous piece of art is the painting American Gothic by American painter Grant Wood in 1930.

The story behind the painting is that he was driving around the town of Eldon Iowa and saw an old farmhouse that had a fancy window in it, and he thought it was a bit silly to have a fancy window on such a plain house.
So he paid his sister and his dentist to pose as a farmer and his daughter.

You can notice that the pitchfork the farmer is holding has three prongs.
The three lines just like the pitchfork also show up on the farmer's overalls, his face, and the window of the farmhouse.

People were not happy with the painting at first because they thought Grant Wood was making fun of farmers in Iowa where the painting was done.
They thought he made them look boring and grumpy.

Grant Wood said that he actually liked hard working Americans that were serious and were farmers, and that's why he did the painting.

Very soon after he made this artwork, the Great Depression happened, which was a time where people had to work very hard to even get a little bit of food, and many people lost their jobs and were very poor.

Because this painting looked like serious hard working Americans, it became very famous and people liked it a lot because they thought it was a good picture to show very serious hard working Americans.


(from: wikipedia - american gothic)


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