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Thousands of Words on a Picture
A Review by Anna Godbersen

There are a few paintings -- the Mona Lisa, say, or that Van Gogh self-portrait with the hat and the bandage -- that are so reproduced and instantly recognizable that they have become unmoored from their origins, and now seem to live more in coffee cups and mouse pads than in the museums where they are physically stored. Grant Wood's American Gothic, with its often-copied man, woman and pitchfork triumvirate, is such a picture. Steven Biel's brief but thoroughly researched book about the painting does a little to restore American Gothic's history; we are told, for instance, that Wood was a native Iowan who had sojourned abroad, that it took him three months to paint what would become his most famous work, that he used his sister Nan and a local dentist as models, although the two never posed together. But what Biel is really interested in, and what gives his book its arc, is American Gothic's history as an image in the American consciousness. After its debut at a 1930 Art Institute of Chicago exhibition, the painting was viewed positively as a critical take on the Puritanism of Middle America, and negatively as an attack on Iowa farmers. (Iowa farm wives, in particular, felt abused by the apparent caricature of them as sour and unpleasant, and besieged the Institute with angry letters.) By the World War II era, however, the painting had come to stand for something else -- the solidity and grit of the American heartland to its fans, and kitsch to its detractors. Wood's work was given a third life in parodies, of course. Biel details the various takes on the image -- from presidents to The Simple Life -- that have emerged, arguing that the parodies ultimately solidify American Gothic's status as an icon of American identity. In the process, Biel offers a blithe, engaging look at how a changing culture alters the meaning of its images to suit its needs.

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