American Gothic House Grant Wood Analysis

When you view this painting, it’s important to realize the extent to which Grant Wood had designed and interpreted American Gothic. At first glance, many believe the painting as realism, and this is true. The painting is modeled after the house, which Wood had realistically rendered in which he created a scene—a man and a woman posing in front of the house. The models for the artwork never posed together when they were drawn prior to the painting.
Although Wood had intended for a portrait, he painted the house in Iowa where he decided to add the man and woman postured in front of the house in a few of his preliminary sketches. Wood, who rarely clarified his conceptual ideas, and did not explain the choice of the house. The house’s windows have two equal arches, capped by the strangely shaped pane that binds them
The manner of painting is almost laid on thickly so that the texture stands out in relief, as an Impasto. In the painting, Wood used his compositional elements with such care that some importance is attached to his choice of house.
One would notice the expressionism of the painting: the choice of despair was not a lazy choice, but because of the Great Depression in 1929. His rendering of a plain, stern-faced Iowa woman has a timeless, mysterious quality that may bring some questions up. Is she the ‘western’ Mona Lisa? The painting is all based on ethics as Grant Wood quotes, “I imagined American Gothic people with their faces stretched out long to go with this American Gothic house”.
During the Great depression, the masterpiece gave hope to a desperate nation, and it helped shape the idea of the Midwest as a land of honest and hardworking men. Today, the painting is firmly rooted in American culture. It also important to note that no other American artwork has been mocked to this extent – maybe the piece was meant to be