Term Paper (Writing Assignment)
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American Gothic
Artworks are not only meant to be admired by the viewers but also meant to educate those coming across them. It also designates to ensure that the viewers are in a position to capture what the artist wants to communicate. Having a glance over a picture or given sets of images tends to show the people the best they can offer. However, getting to understand the meaning which the artist wants the viewers to have a look at requires a proper understanding of the imagery. This paper sought to analyze American Gothic artwork. The artist of the artwork is Grant Wood, whose origin is in the United States. The artwork is dated back to 1930.
Figure 1: American Gothic (Artic.edu, 2020)
The familiar image was first brought to the public in the Art Institute of Chicago and managed to win three hundred prize dollars. According to the artist, Mr. Wood, the impetus of the image came into existence after he had a visit to his small town in Iowa. It is at this point that he spotted a small farmhouse made up of wood that comprised one oversized window, which was a Gothic design. "I imagined American Gothic people with their faces stretched out long to go with this American Gothic house," the author points out. The art was sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, where it sits today. The medium of the artwork is Oil on Beaver Board.
The artwork measures 78 × 65.3 cm (30 3/4 × 25 3/4 in.) Mr. Wood decided to work on this artwork to ensure that he maintains the western culture of the place he had visited before, which is Iowa. Mr. Wood's purpose for doing this work is to majorly appreciate the traditions present in the mid westerns' character.
The image depicts a middle-aged man, who is described as either being a farmer, with his wife or daughter. They are made to stand in front of their house. The farmhouse they stand in front of is assumed to be developed in the late 1890s, because of the architectural design. "Little of the background is visible however, because the figures are so close to the viewer. Mr. Wood based the farmhouse on Dibble House, a building he saw in the small Iowa town of Eldon, and used his sister Nan (1899–1990) and Dr. Byron McKeeby (1867–1950) his dentist, as models for the couple, dressing them in traditional clothes." (Visual-arts-cork.com, 2020)
The work is meant to paint a positive value on the existing American values. "Little of the background is visible, however, because the figures are so close to the viewer. The artwork comprises a man and a woman. The picture shows the difference in time, very different from the life we are living now.
The subject matter of Mr. Wood's artwork is epitomizing virtues and ethics of puritan, which, in his believes, thought that they all dignified mid-western characters. The work also champions the allowed values. For instance, the utilization of the woman in the colonial symbolism describes the print experienced during the 19th century. Also, the use of man's hay in the image symbolized overall and folks, for instance, the manual labor which various people were involved in (Bush, 2017).
The aspects emphasized in the artwork show the life of how people were living back then, particularly during the pre-colonial age. This includes the colonialism that was in place at that time.
There is a mystery in the image of the percentile extent of formality. The black dress of the woman, together with her brooch, the dark blue jacket of the man along with his clean-shaven face, they all render the work quite quality and simple. Comparing this with other images in place, this seems to be odd with this artwork.
In conclusion, the image seems to rigorously planned in several ways. The first way is that the image was found to be imprinted with many intricate vertical and horizontal matrix lines, which are all juxtaposed with a modern crescent of a woman. The available rounded shapes of the surrounding trees and together with the man's spectacles and vest contributes to the complex matrix in the artwork. It should be noted that the available prongs belonging to the hay have been designed in a manner that they are aligned with the bars of the farmhouse windows (Miles, 2019). Besides, they seem like the farmers' dungarees. Gothic window finds an echo on top of the farmer's face. Lastly, visible inverted V on the roof has been echoed by the white collar of the woman.
References
Artic.edu. (2020). [online] Available at: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/d02e0079-8e82-733e-683c-cb83a387ee5e/full/843,/0/default.jpg [Accessed 10 Feb. 2020].
Bush, E. (2017). American Gothic: The Life of Grant Wood by Susan Wood. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, 71(1), 46-46. Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/667892/summary
Miles, R. (2019). Brown's American Gothic. The Oxford Handbook of Charles Brockden Brown, 411. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8iCWDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA411&dq=american+gothic&ots=7RHDV4Gmxp&sig=250JfS6EIz06w8trP5phuELEvvk
