From Local Folk to National Icon: The Three Lives of Grant Wood's "American Gothic"

FAIN: FZ-256625-17

Wanda Marie Corn
Stanford University (Stanford, CA 94305-2004)

A book on the 1930 painting American Gothic by Grant Wood and how it became an iconic image.

The oval-faced, tight-lipped man and woman, bound tightly together with a pitchfork in front of their Gothic Revival house, have become a ubiquitous and recognizable fixture in American visual culture, even to people who know nothing about art. This study offers a close reading and history of Grant Wood's painting American Gothic and its strange odyssey from the studio of an unknown Iowan artist eighty-seven years ago to its international celebrity status today.