Grant Wood's Family Life and How it Influenced His Work

(Left: Woman with Plants, photo credit to jondresner, Right: American Gothic, photo credit to Mark Heard) 

Everyone, no matter who we are, has experiences and relationships that influence their life. These relationships shape who we are and how we perceive others. This can be seen in Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic. The famous image depicts an older man and woman, presumed to be a couple, in front of their simple country home. The expressionless, blank faces on the couple are intriguing to man that observe this image and try to decipher its message. In her article “Grant Wood’s Family Album,” Taylor analyzes the aspects of Wood’s personal life with his family and interprets her beliefs of how these relationships influenced his artwork. Taylor brings to light many facts about Wood’s childhood and his relationships with his father, mother, and younger sister and analyzes the information and how it affected his famous piece American Gothic.

According to Park Rinard, Wood’s confidant, Maryville Wood, Grant’s father, was a very reserved and mysterious man. He took discipline very seriously as well. In the memoir “Return from Bohemia (Wood’s unfinished life story, recorded by Rinard),” Maryville saved a young Grant from a grazing bull’s pasture, and then whipped him for trespassing in the first place. Wood insisted that he didn’t mind the discipline, and that he had no harsh feelings towards his father. However, a theory by Taylor draws reference to a theory by Sigmund Freud that the the concepts of God and the devil are included in one’s feelings towards their father. Wood himself had said that “he was more of a god than a father to me,” in “Return from Bohemia.” Taylor’s theory is that Wood represents his father with a stern, expressionless face wielding a pitchfork, which is commonly associated with the devil. This theory is backed by other evidence, such as the man Wood used as the sitter for American Gothic. This man was Wood’s dentist, another man who caused Wood physical pain in his childhood (pulling several teeth and replacing them with a bridge). Taylor believes that by using his dentist as the sitter for the painting, Wood was able to revisit the pain from his father’s lashings and convey that into the painting, in the form of the pitchfork.

Wood had a closer relationship with the women in his family. His mother, Hattie, and sister, Nan, were the two members of his family who he kept contact with. After the death of his father, Wood stayed with his mother until her death. Taylor notes that Nan was the only sibling that Wood kept in touch with after they moved out of the family’s home. She was also the female sitter used for American Gothic. Despite this, the woman in the painting resembles the portrait of Hattie Wood, called Woman with Plants. The plant behind the woman in American Gothic is the same as the plant Hattie holds in Woman with Plants. Wood also shows Nan in the same dress wearing the same brooch as Hattie wears in Woman with Plants.

Though hard to see, the plant behind and to the left of the woman in American Gothic is the same as the one in Woman with Plants. Also, the woman wears the same black dress with the same brooch. This is Wood’s way of inserting his mother’s persona into the work. Taylor believes that Wood aimed to reunite his mother and father as a couple in front of a modest Iowa home in American Gothic. As noted above, Taylor believes that Wood’s intention with American Gothic was to psychologically reunite his mother and father. However, Wood’s sister Nan stated that the painting was of a small-town man and his daughter, not the farmer and his wife most people assume the couple to represent. The painting has consistently perplexed those who have analyzed it, as there are many possible interpretations that can be made. Take the aspects of the figures in the painting, mainly the expressionless faces and blank stares, for example. Wood stated that the ancestors of his family had developed a quality similar to the Iowa prairie that they inhabited. This information leads one to believe that the figures are meant to be of Wood’s family. Personally, I agree with Taylor’s theory that Wood subconsciously conveyed an image of his father, still alive, and his mother, still young. This theory, however, contradicts what Wood’s sister says was his intention with the piece. A strong case can be made for either interpretation, but due to the information provided about Wood’s relationship with his mother and his father unexpectedly dying when Wood was just 10 years old, I believe the piece to signify Wood’s parents reunited as a couple.

To conclude, Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic has consistently been misinterpreted, due to the assumptions of the people that view the painting, and the level of ambiguity of the female figure in the painting. Wood’s personal life also adds another layer of possible interpretations to the work. His childhood life and relationship with his family add a subconscious aspect to the piece. American Gothic is a fascinating work, and one that can be interpreted differently by each viewer, making it a masterpiece.

Works Cited
Taylor, Sue. "Grant Wood's Family Album." American Art 19.2 (2005): 48-67. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 27 Apr. 2012.

Michelangelo's Letters

In “The Role of Letters in Biographies of Michelangelo”, Deborah Parker examines the role that Michelangelo’s letters have played in the biographies of the artist. Her examination focuses on the Renaissance Period and also the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In Michelangelo’s case, there is an exceptionally rich archive of personal letters. It is seen in this article that personal letters have grave importance in the composition of biographies. As the principal source of information on Michelangelo’s life, these letters provide considerable information on his multi-faceted character, complicated business affairs, his family trials, his anxieties, etc. As biographers seek to unveil the man that is Michelangelo, it is evident that they all have a variety of interests. The object of the study is to uncover these investments in order to show particular concerns and different social and material conditions have affected the way in which biographers used the letters. This will also uncover information about the life of Michelangelo.

In many of the Renaissance biographies, the information presented about his life is not an accurate representation of the views of Michelangelo. Vasari was one writer who admired Michelangelo but did not provide the most accurate information using the letters of Michelangelo.

During the ninteenth and twentieth centuries, more letters became avaliable although the process of retrieving them was extremely slow and fitful. The writers of this time that constructed biographies of Michelangelo were Hartford, Grimm, Gotti, Symonds, and Papini. They all wrote in the wake of positivism.

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