Art Awareness Presentation Outline Painting: American Gothic Artist: Grant Wood (1891-1942) Information on the Artist: Grant Wood was born on February 13, 1891 on his parents' farm four miles east of Anamosa, Iowa, where he spent the first ten years of his life After his father's death in 1901, he moved to Cedar Rapids with his mother, sister Nan and brother Frank Even though life on the farm came to an end, the sights, smells and sounds of his country childhood would be preserved forever in the faces and landscapes of his famous paintings Grant Wood was an exceptional artist from a very young age When he was 14, he won third prize in a national contest for a crayon drawing of oak leaves and said that winning that prize was his inspiration to become an artist His formal art education included two summers with Ernest Batchelder at the School of Design and Handicraft in Minneapolis and three years of occasional night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago In October 1920, Grant Wood set out on a trip to Europe, telling his sister "the art critics and dealers want no part of American art They think this country is too new for any culture and too crude and undeveloped to produce any artists You have to be a Frenchman, take a French name, and paint like a Frenchman to gain recognition." It wasn't long before Grant would prove them wrong In 1923 Wood took a leave of absence from teaching high school art to visit Europe for a second time, where he studied at the Academie Julien in Paris While in Europe, he experimented with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism His exposure to modern European art played a significant role in the development of his mature style In 1927 Wood received a prestigious local commission from the city of Cedar Rapids to design a stained glass window for the Veterans Memorial Building The Memorial Window stood 24x20feet At the base of the window were six life-size figures of soldiers of every American war, beginning with the Revolutionary War and ending with W.W I Above the soldiers was a woman representing the Republic The window took two years to complete, including time spent supervising the fabrication of the glass in Munich, where the guild tradition of medieval craftsmanship continued He visited German museums, and was strongly influenced by the sharp detail of 15th-century German and Flemish paintings He soon abandoned his Impressionist manner for the detailed, realistic manner for which he is known In 1934, Wood joined the faculty of the University of Iowa In his spare time he designed book jackets and did illustrations After the Works Progress Administration was established, Wood directed the 34 artists working at the University of Iowa and planned and executed a series of frescoes at Iowa State University in Ames and elsewhere Wood was only 50 when he died of pancreatic cancer in 1942 in Iowa City Information on the Painting: In 1930, Grant Wood, driving in Eldon, Iowa, spotted the house he would make famous and decided to use it in a pencil sketch for a painting he planned to enter in the Art Institute of Chicago's 43rd annual exhibition The small structure was a perfect example of Midwestern steamboat Gothic architecture, and Wood thought it would be a suitable background for a portrait of two people, a woman and a man holding a rake He recruited his sister to be the woman and the local dentist to play the man (He painted them separately They never posed side by side.) He sent to Chicago for the man's overalls and woman's apron, decided a pitchfork would look better than a rake, added his mother's cameo to the woman's outfit and finished his painting After he sent it to Chicago, history was almost not made Narrowly escaping preliminary elimination, Wood's painting was eventually awarded third prize and $300 At that point, ''American Gothic,'' with its bronze medal, could logically have been expected to disappear Instead it began the journey from potential cliché to national symbol The painting got Wood in some trouble with people who thought that he was poking fun at the provincial nature of small-town folk But Wood always shied away from the claim that he was satirizing the Midwest Discussion Questions: Wood said, “I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa” What you think he meant by that? How you think the pair are related? Husband and wife? Father and daughter? Do you think Wood was making fun of the people in Iowa or admiring them? "Gothic" windows were pointed at the top and looked like an up-side-down pitchfork A hundred years ago, this gothic design was often used when designing homes, public buildings and even tombstones Do you see the relationship between the window and the pitchfork? “All the good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.” Grant Wood ... Questions: Wood said, “I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa” What you think he meant by that? How you think the pair are related? Husband and wife? Father and daughter? Do you think Wood was... not made Narrowly escaping preliminary elimination, Wood' s painting was eventually awarded third prize and $300 At that point, ''American Gothic, '' with its bronze medal, could logically have... cliché to national symbol The painting got Wood in some trouble with people who thought that he was poking fun at the provincial nature of small-town folk But Wood always shied away from the claim