Gothic anniversary
75-year-old masterpiece continues to turn heads
By Todd Dvorak - Associated Press Writer
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Eldon, Iowa -- Just before the photographer counts three, John Bruce and his wife, Jennifer, glance over their shoulders, a final check on their alignment with the white farmhouse behind them and its unmistakable second-story window.
They stand side by side, straight-backed and stiff-shouldered. Neither offers the slightest crease of a smile -- until the camera's shutter has snapped.
Like many other art and pop culture buffs who venture to this far-flung Iowa town each year, the Bruces wanted their own shot at posing in front of the house that inspired one of the most familiar -- and lampooned -- paintings in America: Grant Wood's "American Gothic."
The portrait of rural farmer turns 75 this year.
And as it did from its debut, the painting and its two characters -- the stern, balding and bespectacled farmer with pitchfork in hand, and the dour, strait-laced woman to his right -- remain as intriguing to art critics, advertisers and the public as ever.
Over the decades, the painting has been ridiculed as an indictment on rural life, hailed as a national symbol and cheered and jeered on its artistic merits.
To John Bruce, whose fascination dates to the first time he saw it on a cereal box in the 1960s, Wood's work conveys the beauty of wholesome, hardworking, no-frills Midwestern values.
"Being from the Midwest myself, I think it displays pretty well some of the character of the people," said Bruce, who traveled with his wife from Rochester, Minn., to make this town of 3,038 a must-see summer vacation destination. "It shows the kind of stern but hardworking people that had to struggle to make it in their day, especially during the Depression," he said.
Long fascinated by the arched Gothic windows of Europe's cathedrals, Woods had told friends in 1930 that he was looking for a house with similar windows as a backdrop for his next painting. He spotted the small two-bedroom house that summer while driving with a student through Eldon, about 90 miles southeast of Des Moines, and sketched it that day.
Back at his studio in Cedar Rapids, Woods, then 39, took three months to finish the work, a 30-inch-by-35-inch oil painting on beaver board, a cheap product made from compressed wood pulp and used then to build walls. The figures were added separately. The model for the farmer was Wood's dentist, Byron McKeeby; the woman was Wood's sister, Nan.
Wayne and Shirley Slycord, of Eldon, Iowa, pose for a photo in front of the house made famous in Grant Wood's painting "American Gothic."
"Grant assured us both that when he finished the painting, no one would ever recognize us," Nan Wood Graham said in her book, "My Brother, Grant Wood."
"He told me to slick down my hair and part it in the middle, and asked me to make an apron trimmed with rickrack, a trim that was out of style and unavailable in the stores. After the painting made its debut, rickrack made a comeback," she said.
Charlie Neibergal/AP Photo Woods submitted the painting to the 43rd Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, sponsored by the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition chairman considered the work fluff, calling it a "comic valentine." But a trustee with a different opinion stepped in to prevent the painting from being shipped back to Iowa, according to Biel. As a result, "American Gothic" was a hit and was awarded the bronze medal. A $300 purchase price ensured its spot among the museum's most prized acquisitions.
