American Gothic (section)

Few American paintings are as instantly recognizable as Grant Wood's "American Gothic." Painted in 1930, it shows a stern man holding a pitchfork beside a woman with a serious, slightly worried expression. Behind them stands a modest white farmhouse with a pointed window in the Gothic Revival style, which is actually where the painting gets its name. Wood spotted the real house in Eldon, Iowa, and was struck by its fancy window on such a plain little building. He imagined the kind of people he thought might live there and built the scene around that idea.

The models were not a farming couple at all. The woman was Wood's own sister, Nan, and the man was his dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby. Wood worked in a style sometimes called Regionalism, which celebrated rural American life and everyday people rather than grand or fancy subjects. When the painting first appeared, some Iowans felt insulted, thinking Wood was poking fun at country folk. Others saw it as a tribute to hardworking pioneers. Wood himself stayed a bit mysterious about his true meaning, and that lingering question is part of why the image still grabs our attention today. It has been copied and parodied countless times, which says a lot about how deeply it has stuck in our memory.