If American Gothic is all you’ve known about Grant Wood, it’s not surprising. Like Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch’s The Scream, it’s the one picture that marks the memory and obscures the rest of the artists’ work.
In Wood’s case, it hides the career of an artist whose work not only spans styles but also includes woodwork, metalwork, stained glass and not a small amount of inventive whimsy.
As well, he was a teacher, not only of artists but of eighth-graders, and a key figure in developing American Regionalism, along with Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry.
Most of this was news to me when I started preparing for a family visit to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, his home and workplace through most of his career. That’s when I searched to see what would be worth seeing while there, and found the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, which has the largest collection of his work.
Self-portraits, 1925 and 1942
Wood’s early life and training was quite varied. He was born in a small town near Cedar Rapids in 1891 and moved to Cedar Rapids with his mother when his father died in 1901. He graduated from high school while working as an apprentice in a local metal shop, and then enrolled at The Handicraft Guild, a Minneapolis art school run by women. From 1913 to 1916, he studied at the Art Institute in Chicago while also working as a silversmith.
Wi
th his friend Paul Hanson, he turned his hand to home design and building; this 1918 painting is of a house he built. During World War I he enlisted in the army and worked as a camouflage artist.
After the war, he continued with his art while earning as an art and craft teacher at a local junior high school, where he was a popular teacher. In the photo above, he and students are installing a frieze, Imagination Isles, that they created for the school cafeteria. His classes also built the Mourner’s Bench that was placed outside the principal’s office for misbehaving students, with whimsical heads of repentant violators atop its posts.
His serious painting career developed alongside his teaching job; he was able to spend several summers studying in France and painting, in a style that is generally Impressionist, a style that continued popular in the U.S. but had largely fallen from favor in France.
During those years in the 1920s he also turned to work in a more commercial vein, paintings and other work commissioned by local businesses. Henry Ely, a home builder and supporter, hired him to produce models of his various house offerings, complete with miniature lawns and gardens, and then commissioned a painting that was reproduced as a billboard on the side of the developer’s office, blending a miniature house with a scene modeled on the classics. That’s The Adoration of the Home, painted in 1921-22.
Among other projects in that period, another patron, John B. Turner, commissioned him to design the conversion of a local mansion into a funeral home, a project of both art and architecture.
His pay for that job was living and studio space above the mansion’s former stables at 5 Turner Alley.
For that studio he created a door from an old windowed coffin lid, with a clock to indicate that “Grant Wood is returning to the studio at” or where he was—”taking a bath,” “having a party” or “out of town.”
During his work there, which was during his last years teaching at the junior high school, he collected bits and pieces of debris from the alley that led to the studio and constructed these “Lilies of the Alley” as gifts to friends.
Another commission that came his way in that period produced what are some of my favorites, and which remind me of photographs by Lewis Hine. They show men at work in situations where great detail is given to the machinery—the commission was from the J.G. Cherry company, a maker of dairy equipment—but the unmistakable humanity of the workers is clear.
Except for Ten Tons of Accuracy, the workers are large, and their precision and craftsmanship is emphasized, a precision that Wood applied to his own work. The paintings were made based on hours spent sketching in the factory.
As well, the need to accurately represent the machinery marks the beginning of a real shift away from Wood’s earlier Impressionist style.
At left, Shop Inspector; below, The Painter and my personal favorite Wood work, Coil Welder.
By the time of the Cherry commission, he was well-enough established as an artist to leave his teaching job and work full time at his art.
Another major commission in that period produced not only an amazing work, but also led to significant changes in his style. That commission was for a huge stained-glass window commemorating veterans of American wars, to be installed in a combination veterans’ memorial and new City Hall. The model for the peace figure was his sister, Nan Wood, who also appears in American Gothic.
The design for the window was sketched out on huge sheets of drawing paper at full size. Wood then spent three months in Munich, supervising the fabrication of the window. While there, he spent considerable time in museums and galleries, absorbing both current work, and the works of Flemish masters such as Jan van Eyck, studies that likely contributed to the growing precision of line that shows up in his work, including this painting of a house in Munich.
The style shift continued after his return, and can be seen in this 1928 portrait of John Turner, which won a state prize for portraiture in 1929 (yes, the Iowa State Fair included painting competitions!) and what some say is the first true example of his new ‘Regionalist’ style, Woman with Plants, featuring his mother as the model. While Turner stands out sharply from the background, Woman with Plants shows both in similar colors and more connection between foreground and background.
The following year, American Gothic took third place at an annual competition at the Art Institute of Chicago, with a prize of $300; a patron persuaded the museum to buy the painting, which quickly became a popular sensation, although some Iowans thought it was mocking them. Wood responded that it was appreciation and that “I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa.”
The popularity of the painting gave Wood a platform to speak out in favor of Regionalism and its values and against the growing move toward abstract painting in America; he also helped fellow Regionalists Curry and Benton find teaching positions at mid-western universities. They were also among the group of artists who sold their work, such as the prints above, through the Associated American Artists, often with work selling out quickly.
In 1934, Wood was hired for several months as coordinator for Federal arts projects in Iowa, and then taught for the next seven years at the University of Iowa, supervising mural projects such as the one below for Iowa State University, and mentoring students while continuing to paint on his own.
Wood died of pancreatic cancer in early 1942, the day before his 51st birthday. Spring in the country, below, was his last major landscape; it could almost be a summary of his generally optimistic work and his belief in humanity’s connection to a cyclical natural world.
Excellent post!!