American Gothic

[Jack]

This well-known painting, what are your thoughts on it?



A friend and I were talking about it, and she said something about the man's daughter looking sad, and I was thrown-back because I always assumed the two people were husband and wife, but now I look at it and think maybe they are father and daughter.

What do you think?

[Walden]

I say it's Grant Wood's sister and dentist.

[Jack]

Don't go getting all technical on us now.

[peeplj]

I also always figured man and wife; it was not uncommon in the days of American subsistance farming for a man to seek a much younger woman as wife so that she could "do" for him in his old and failing years.

In today's world, you may well wonder why a young girl--sometimes very young; my great-grandmother was married at 14 and began having babies almost immediately--would agree to a such a bargain that would leave her with the burden of a sickly, aged husband in her own last good years.

My parents grew up in the Great Depression on subsistance farms, and comments by both have shed some light on this for me.

From a girl's perspective, the one thing they dreamed of more than anything else was leaving their parents' farm. My mother told me that before she even had her first cycle, she had already decided she would marry the first boy to ask her--she was convinced anyone, anything had to be better than her parents' farm.

From a boy's perspective, things weren't much brighter. Also first and foremost in their minds was leaving the family farm and starting their own life, always with the idea of not being a farmer. Some did get away from the farms--the wars helped, there--but many never did.

To understand this, something else needs to be mentioned.

In the modern world, we understand how terrible and how wrong slavery was--and it was. You'll not be getting any defense of slavery from me!

What we often don't understand is that farmers routinely treated their children with a degree of brutality and ruthlessness that not even their slaves experienced. Slaves were valuable members of a farmer's household, and had whatever rights and privileges they were assigned by their owner; children were property, often seen as contributing less to the farm than even the worst slaves, and had no rights or redress at all.

So...to come back to the present, yeah, I think ages in the painting are far more likely man and wife rather than father and daughter. Evidence: a daughter would stand slightly behind her father and would keep her head respectfully down, or she'd be beaten. Also, a man that age would very likely not have daughters old enough to be fully grown women yet.

--James

[Walden]

My mother told me that before she even had her first cycle, she had already decided she would marry the first boy to ask her--she was convinced anyone, anything had to be better than her parents' farm.

My mother never spoke to me much about her first cycle.

My dad told me about his first cycle. It was a Suzuki.

[Innocent Bystander]

Partner & Partner. Didn't you ever see the Rocky Horror Show? They had a pastiche of it right at the beginning.

I've known couples like that, where one looks older than the other despite the fact that they are the same age. They don't look that far apart, to me. If he is outside in the weather he'll be more visibly aged than his wife is if she's working on more sheltered surroundings.
Even if you assume they are different ages, the nineteen century viewpoint was that the wife should be half the husband's age plus seven years. Another factor is that the man spends his time getting the farm together before he has the leisure to look for a wife, so he's liable to be older. I'm thinking rural Ireland here, not just the U.S.

[Joseph E. Smith]

My mother told me that before she even had her first cycle, she had already decided she would marry the first boy to ask her--she was convinced anyone, anything had to be better than her parents' farm.

My mother never spoke to me much about her first cycle.

My dad told me about his first cycle. It was a Suzuki.

[SteveK]

According to a website of the Art Institute of Chicago the picture is supposed to represent a farmer and his unmarried daughter. It was painted in 1930. The picture does seem to represent an earlier era, though. I had always assumed that it was a man and his wife and it has always reminded me of by grandparents. Not because the people look like my grandparents or that they had a house like that. It's just the general aura of the picture. I don't think my grandmother was quite as dour looking as the woman in the picture. I don't believe that when my parents were growing up that they were treated like slaves but they were expected to work on the farm. Both my parents left the farm and didn't want to go back. Almost all my aunts and uncles on both sides also left the farm.

http://www.artic.edu/artaccess/AA_Moder ... OD_5.shtml

[Jerry Freeman]

NPR broadcast a story on American Gothic awhile back on their Present at the Creation series. You can listen to it here:

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/fea ... index.html

The artist avoided revealing any explicit meaning behind his work. His younger sister Nan served as a model for the woman, and Andringa believes Wood may have tried to maintain ambiguity for his sister's sake. Wood elongated Nan's face and neck to extend the visual metaphor -- and he had Dr. B.H. McKeeby, a local dentist, prop up the famous pitchfork. The real-life pair was separated by a significant age gap, something that's not so obvious in the painting. Are they husband and wife? Father and daughter? Something even more... complicated?

Andringa believes in a simpler explanation -- "He didn't want her to think she looked as old as his dentist!" -- but concedes "it gives a twist to the picture if you think of those jokes about the father's daughter, protecting her virginity with a pitchfork... and that gives another twist on 'gothic' as well."

Ambiguity has helped the painting endure. "I think what strikes you from the beginning is that you're with one of the most exciting couples in the history of art," says curator Daniel Schulman of the Art Institute of Chicago, where the painting hangs today. "They look dour and sour and four-square and geometric... you just never run out of this encyclopedia of detail."

Best wishes,
Jerry

[Jerry Freeman]

I would say that the ambiguity about the couple's relationship is one of the things that makes the painting so wonderful. It's like the Mona Lisa's mysterious smile -- the mystery makes the painting that much more fascinating.

Best wishes,
Jerry

[Dale]

It never has occurred to me for a second that it would be anything other than husband & wife.

[hyldemoer]

We interpret the painting by rules of the subculture we identify with.

Two guys (that don't look like brothers but clearly know each other because they're having a conversation) walk into a barbershop to get a haircut.

Are they co-workers, old school friends, neighbors, and/or lovers?

Granted, it doesn't matter but our brain goes ahead an makes assumptions just the same.
What we come up with says more about us than them.

[Dale]

Content re: slavery split to this thread:

http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=41738

[Nanohedron]

I would say that the ambiguity about the couple's relationship is one of the things that makes the painting so wonderful. It's like the Mona Lisa's mysterious smile -- the mystery makes the painting that much more fascinating.

Best wishes,
Jerry

That's it in one, for my money. There's no point in pinning down what it's "supposed" to be. The painting suggests so many possibilities that you can almost hear story after new story trying to be heard. Not all great art needs to suggest a story, but those works that compel us to listen for one have power in them, at least. Greater art allows for many possibilites. That's what makes it seductive. IMHO, American Gothic is great art.

I keep going back to the woman's expression, which for me is the fulcrum upon which everything else in the painting balances. I can see anything in her face from bitterness, resignation, fear, exasperation, concern, and love. Note that the more "negative" side of possibilites abound. This automatically suggests the hardscrabble life they both would lead, but there's a good deal of inner life going on, too.

On the other hand, the man's expression is perhaps dour, but little else. Yet there's possibility for a story there, too, although less of one. His resignation appears complete, his personality is more buried to the eye, and so he is maybe at peace with his lot. Despite his expression, one of the possibilities is that he might be a very kind man, if down-to-earth out of necessity. Another possibility is that he's fraught with his religion and rules his house with an iron hand.

There's no one way or the other in this work.

What we come up with says more about us than them.

And that's the function of good art. It's a mirror.


(edited for spelling and stuff)

[gonzo914]

She is actually his third wife, the first one having died in childbirth after birthing seven young'uns, and the second succumbing to cholera. He'll father a total of 19 children. They will all be expected to work on the farm until they either (a) head farther west and homestead their own holding (the boys), or (b) become the child bride of a neighboring widower (the girls), or (c) die of cholera, too. At least one of the girls from the third marriage will marry one of the boys from the first marriage. This third wife will eventually die in childbirth as well, from complications of a breech birth of twins, and then one older daughter will be expected to stay home with the old man to take care of him and raise the rest of the kids until finally he gets kicked by a horse and falls into the combine. She'll be 45 years old by then with limited economic prospects, but at least she won't be getting molested by her father anymore.