At least one day, you saw this picture. And the first thing you thought was: - "Hmm ... What is happening here?"

The painting "American Gothic" produces an ambiguous impression on the viewer. Let's try to understand why this happens.
The picture was created in 1930, the artist Grant Wood. Once, he saw a small white house in the style of carpentry gothic. The house attracted the artist, and he decided to write a picture telling the history of residents of the houses that could live in it. As models, he chose his sister National and dentist Byron McCyby. Wood wrote people and the house separately, the scene we see in the picture never happened.

A photograph on which the sister of the artist National and Byron McCyby, who became the heroes of the American Gothic.

Having finished, Wood decided to submit his picture at the competition in the Chicago Institute of Arts. The judges perceived the picture as "humorous Valentine", demonstrating the relations of two spouses with life "baggage". But the keeper of the museum saw something other in the picture and persuaded the judges to hand the Voodoo a prize of 300 dollars and acquire a picture for the institute. There she, by the way, remains still.

After purchasing the picture, the image was decided to type in several urban newspapers. The unexpected, residents of the staff of Iowa, was happening, where the picture was written were accepted by the satirical image of the residents of the state. One lady even threatened to bite the Ear to the artist.

Grant Wood in his justification said that I wanted to create a collective portrait of the Americans and did not want to hurt the feelings of the states of the state. The sister of the artist also saw a humiliating attitude in the picture, however, to her. She spoke to his brother that in the picture it can be taken for his man's wife twice as older. After a public demonstration of the picture, Nen argued that the film depicted father and daughter. However, the artist himself did not comment on this.

Some critics are confident that the picture is a satire to the life of small American cities. During the 1930s, American Gothic became part of a growing critical view of the life and values \u200b\u200bof rural America.

Now pay attention to some facts. Wood was a regionalist artist, not very famous outside his state. He himself rose on the farm, in the countryside, loved the nature and landscapes of small towns. So why do the artist laugh at what he loves?

Working with Bayron McCyby in the image of a man, Wood said that he was a nice face of Bairon. In the picture, a man is depicted in round glasses, but McCybi wore glasses with octagonal lenses. But the father of Wood, wore round glasses, popular in the XIX century.

The image of a woman was written off her sister. In the life of Nen was a bright and positive girl, but in the picture she looks much older. Despite the fact that the picture was written in the 20th century, the clothes of the heroes are taken from the Victorian era, it confirms the angle of the hostess at home, (which Nan had to fret from the mother's dresses, as they did not sell such stores), as well as cameo, which was Popular at that time.

It is possible that Wood created a picture of the memories in which heroes and things reminded him of childhood and the time when he lived on the farm. In addition, during the time of the Great Depression, the picture began to be considered as an image of the masses of American pioneers.

But, despite all this, the picture still leaves a strange mysterious impression. Perhaps the case in the attributes and "behavior" of the heroes. If you carefully look at the heroes, we will see that the man stands in the foreground, a woman is a little behind. His elbow, he hurts her, not letting come closer. In his hands, he holds a pitchfork, but keeps them in a fist, which gives a gesture slightly threatening look.

Over the house you can see the spire of the church. This is a reference to the heritage of Puritian-first-stems who adhered to strict rules and did not like when they invade their quiet life. Behind the back of the man you can see the red barn, which indicates the kind of activity of the owners, like flowers on the veranda. But especially impressionable viewers see the story of horror movie in the picture. Due to what the picture is hundreds, and maybe thousands of times subjected to ridicule. On the Internet you can find a mass of collages on completely different topics, ranging from horror films, ending with a parody of famous characters, musicians, political figures.

Whatever the suggestions of critics and the public, what impression makes this picture only to solve us. In Chicago, for example, considered a good idea to set the characters of the picture of the monument, as if letting them in a large city with a suitcase.

Painting Grant Devolson Wood (1891 - 1942) "American Gothic"

2. Sources of inspiration for the artist served memories of childhood spent in a rural outback, as well as family albums with photos in the Victorian spirit. Points of men, apron and brooch Women depicted in the picture were old-fashioned. The artist painted them in the example of those who wore his parents, who, like other inhabitants of the American province, were the heirs of Puritanov-Puritox.

3. The models for the painting served as a 62-year-old dentist of the artist Byron McCyby and his 30-year-old daughter Nan Wood Graham, although many believe that it was a husband and wife. The dentist agreed to start randomly and only if it knew him, "I like your face, he told him somehow an artist. - It all seems to consist of long straight lines ", but in the end, Wood did not restrain his promise.

4. The scenes shown in the picture has never been in reality. The artist wrote outline from models separately.

5. The picture did not just won the competition, but also caused a large public resonance when several newspapers were published. The newspaper received a lot of letters and responses, often negative. "I advise you to hang this portrait on one of our good downtown Iowa," the wife of Farmer Mrs. Earl Robinson, Ironized in the letter in the newspaper Des Moines Register. - From the expression of the face of this woman will definitely be sick milk. " "I would like this envious lady (the author of the letter) to send me his photo," Nen Wood Greham remained. "I know where I'll hang it ...". Residents of Iowa were unhappy with them were depicted.

6. House in the style of carpentry Gothic, depicted in the picture, was built in Eldon, Iowa, in 1881-1882. Gothic This style was called for the use of non-neutic Victorian motifs. The red barn was never in reality, the artist portrayed him as a memory of his childhood, such a barn was drawn on the closet that the artist's father did.

7. On the picture repeatedly - on the overalls and on the shirt of men, on the windows of windows, on the plants in the background, the drawing of the villas is repeated.

8. Grant Wood studied in Munich Painting of the Northern Renaissance, which had a strong influence on his work.

9. The woman in the picture is knocked out one curl. In one of his letters, the artist wrote: "I allowed one strand to get out to show, no matter what, humanity character."

10. The son of rural workers of the Midwest Wood said that he did not invest an ominous subtext, nor Satira on the provincials, which was seen in the work of criticism and the public: "I did not write Satira," explained to the surprised interpretations Wood. "I tried to portray these people, what they were for me in that life I knew." But as if they did not interpret the picture, she became a symbol of a typical American lifestyle of that time.

History

Grant Devolson Wood

American artist. Pictured the rural life of the American Middle West. His picture "American Gothic" (1930) is one of the most recognizable and parody works of the United States of the twentieth century. Stored in the Chicago Institute of Arts, where was first exhibited and where her author studied.

Dusty side roads. Rare trees. Houses - white, low, far from each other. Unbredded areas. Overgrown field. American flag. Thus, Eldon, Iowa, is a city in a thousand people, where in 1930, in 1930, no one else is a well-known grant Wood, having arrived at a small provincial exhibition, noticed in the distance the most ordinary rural house with an inappropriate pointed gothic window on the second floor.

This house and this window is the only constant in sketches to the picture whose task was to portray the maximum stereotypical inhabitants of the American Middle West.

No one knows why the initial owners of the house decided to make the top window in the style of church architecture. It is possible to make high furniture through it. But the reason could be purely decorative: "Carpentry Gothic", as the provincial architectural style in the USA is called the second half of the XIX century, there was a tendency to simple wooden houses with a pair of cheap meaningless decorations. And this is exactly how most of the states look like a city feature wherever you go.

Interpretation

The picture itself is uncomplicated. Two figures - an elderly farmer, compressive forks, and his daughter, the old Virgin in the Puritan dress, which apparently, apparently, from the mother. In the background - a famous house and a window. The curtains are dotted - perhaps in honor of Mourning, although at that time this tradition was no longer. The symbolism of Villa is not clarified, but Wood definitely emphasizes it in the lines of the farm overalls (besides, the pitchfork is an inverted window).

Flowers, which were not in the original sketches - Geran and Sansevieria - traditionally denote melancholy and stupidity. They appear in other pictures of Wood.

All this plus the straight frontal composition refers simultaneously to the deliberately flat medieval portrait, and to the manner of photographers of the beginning of the century to shoot people against the background of their homes - about the same stoic faces and a little indirect look.

Reaction

At the beginning of the 30s, the picture was perceived as a parody of the population of the Midwest. During the Great Depression, the icon of the authentic spirit of American pioneers became an icon. In the 60s again became a parody and continues to be to this day. But the parody is a genre, isolated in time: it clings to the current and forgetting with him. Why is the picture still continue to remember?

The staff has a complex relationship with history. In major metropolis, there are usually several major events of relatively recently - for example, in New York, this will be the arrival of immigrants on Ellis Island and 9/11 in New York. Even goodzon do not remember. On the front, on the contrary, the story is everywhere - Indian tribes, war for independence, civil, ethnic colonies, the first gentle roads, running missionaries - and these are the only places, really saturated (albeit a short) story.

In the gray area between the frontier and the metropolis there is no history or culture. These are secondary cities, the only function of which is to be inhabited. That is, Eldon, Iowa, - and that is why Wood initially turned out to be. The exhibition on which the artist arrived was the goal of carrying art in the most popular masses, and the city was chosen to be appropriate - empty, boring, aside from everything, with one street and one church.

And here you need to remember what Gothic is.

Gothic

Gothic originated in the XII century from the desire of one abbot to renovate his old church dear to his heart - in particular, fill it with daylight - and quickly conquered the hearts of architects, allowing you to build higher, and at the same time to spend less stone.

With the arrival of the Renaissance, the Gothic style went into the shadow as well as the XIX century, where he found a second breath on the rise of interest in the Middle Ages and in the peak of the industrial revolution. It was then that the world successfully invented new modern problems, the consequences of which were not solved so far, and the view of the past was trying to find some alternative - giving us not only neospeki, but also prefailelites, interest in occult practices and puritan conservatism.

Gothic is not in stone. Gothic is an arcade.

In the canon of late Middle Ages, she gave the desired reason for inspiration. Her world was still not about a person and did not belong to a person, but he was still beautiful. And all these stained glass windows, columns and arches also gave it cold, albeit inhuman, but still beauty.

So, Puritan morality and carpentry style as a prophet is actually detractable gothic. This is a look at a person in a double predestination lens, when the question of his salvation is decided, and it is possible to determine this from the side only by whether it fastens on itself the highest button.

Just in the old world, besides this button, it was still a culture. And in the new there was nothing but potatoes and Indian graves. It only remains that it remains on the second floor there is a beautiful gothic window as the only sign of the continuity of this culture, now reduced to a pair of painted bars set at right angles.

Puritan morality and carpentry style is actually detractable gothic.

"American Gothic" - Picture of the American artist Grant Wood, created in 1930. One of the most recognizable images in the American XX century art.

In the picture depicted a farmer with her daughter on the background of a house built in the style of carpentry gothic. In the right hand, the farmer has a pitchfork, which he keeps in a firmly compressed fist as they hold the weapon. Voodoo managed to transfer the unattractiveness of the father and daughter - tightly compressed lips and a heavy causing her father, his elbow, exposed before his daughter, her pulled hair is only with one free curl, a little frightened in the direction of his head and eyes, full of insults or perturbations. The daughter is dressed in a typical XIX century for America apron, and the seams on the farmer's clothes resemble forks in his hand. The circuit of the Villa can be seen in the windows at home in the background. Behind the back women are visible pots with flowers and the spire of the Church in the distance, and behind the man stands barn. The composition of the picture resembles American photos of the late XIX century.

IN 1 930 in the city of Eldon, Iowa Grant Wood, noticed a small white house in the style of carpentry gothic. He wanted to portray this house and people who, in his opinion, could live in it. The sister of the artist Nan served as a model for the daughter of the farmer, and by the model for the farmer himself became Byron McCyi ( Byron McKeeby.), artist's dentist from Cedar Rampidz ( Cedar Rapids.) In Iowa. Wood wrote a house and people separately, the scene, as we see it in the picture, has never been in reality.

Wood presented American Gothic at the competition in the Chicago Institute of Arts. The judges estimated it as a humorous Valentine, but the Keeper of the Museum convinced them to issue a prize of 300 dollars to the author and convinced the Institute of Arts to acquire a picture where it remains to this day. Soon picture printed in Chicago newspapers, New York, Boston, Kansas City and Indianapolis. However, after the publication in the newspaper the city of Cedar-Rapidz followed a negative reaction. Residents of Iowa were angry at how the artist portrayed them. One farmer even threatened to bite off Voodoo ear.)))

Grant Wood was justified that he wanted to do not caricature on the residents of Iowa, but a collective portrait of the Americans. The sister of Wood was insulted, because in the picture it can be taken for his man's wife half the older.

Critics believed that the picture was a satire on the rural life of small American towns. However, during the Great Depression, the attitude towards the picture has changed. She began to be considered as an image of the unshakable spirit of American pioneers.

In terms of copies, parodies and allusions in the mass culture, American Gothic stands along with such masterpieces, like Mona Lisa Leonardo and a cry of Musk.

The sister of the artist and his dentist, from which the picture is written.

The work of the photographer Gordon Parks is considered the first parody.

The parodies created by the unserved set, here is the lowest part:

"American Gothic" (American Gothic) is the famous picture of the American artist Grant Devolson Wood, established in 1930. One of the most recognizable images in the American art of the 20th century, on a par with "Jocond" Leonardo da Vinci and the "cry" of Edward Minka, and, part-time, the object of the enormous number of parodies and projections, which is known for the arts of the XX and XXI centuries. In Russia, oddly enough, not as popular as around the world.

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Picture plot and creating history

The picture shows farmers, a man and a girl, on the background of the house built in the style of carpentry gothic (wounded neoochik). In the hand at the farmer, the porch, which he holds in a compressed fist as a weapon. He also has a tightly compressed lips and a heavy glance, the seams on clothes repeat the conrter forks, the same contour can be seen in the windows of the house in the background. His elbow is put up before the girl - perhaps his wife, but rather, a daughter, whose head is turned toward his father, and on the gloomy face, the expression of resentment and indignation was frozen. A very unattractive couple, in the unshakable and puritan restraint of which a hidden threat and dramatic relationship is guessed.

The picture was written in 1930 in the city of Eldon State Iowa - Wood once noticed a small white house and wanted to portray him and people who could live in it. The model for the daughter of the farmer served as a sister of the artist Nan, and the "farmer" - Wood dentist, Byron McKeeby (Byron McKeeby). Wood wrote a house and people individually, the scene, as we see it in the picture, has never been in reality.

Nan and Bayron McCyby

The picture soon acquired Wood Chicago Institute of Arts (there it is also kept to this day), and after the appearance of reproductions in the newspaper there was a negative public response. Residents of Iowa were angry at how the artist portrayed them. One farmer even threatened to bite off Voodoo ear. Grant Wood was justified that he wanted to do not caricature on the residents of Iowa, but a collective portrait of the Americans. Wood's sister, insulted that in the picture it can be taken for his man's wife twice as older, began to argue that "American Gothic" depicts his father with his daughter, but this moment did not comment on this moment.

One of the first parodies, the work of the photographer Gordon Parks

Photoshab

The work is a talented, multifaceted and ambiguous, in terms of copies, parodies and alluzi in mass culture with "American Gothic" can be compared little.