Un tableau de Grant Wood: American Ghotic (document en anglais)

American Gothic is an iconic painting by Grant Wood, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood’s inspiration came from a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival style with a distinctive upper window and a decision to paint the house along with “the kind of people I fancied should live in that house.” The painting shows a farmer standing beside his spinster daughter. The fi gures were modeled by the artist’s dentist and sister. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron mimicking XIXth century American and the couple are in the traditional roles of men and women, the man’s pitchfork symbolizing hard labor, and the flowers over the woman’s right shoulder suggesting domesticity. It is one of the most familiar images in XXth century American art, and one of the most parodied artworks within American popular culture.

• Instead of the two typical XIXth century immigrants, we see people of Mexican origin. It suggests the typical XIXst century immigrants are from Mexican origin.

• Instead of a pitchfork, the man on the photo

is holding a tool and has dirty hands: he is not a

farmer anymore, he has become a builder which

is also hard labour.

• His wife has a feather duster in her pocket:

she must be a housekeeper, the kind of menial

jobs usually done by unskilled workers when

they settle in the US.

• The house has changed. It is a bright blue

colour, typical of many houses in Mexico.

• By caricaturing the famous painting, representing 19

th

century typical Americans, Santiago

Forero wants us to realize / wants to stress /

emphasize the importance of the MexicanAmericans today.

• It reveals that immigrants of Mexican origin

must be infl uential in the American social,

political and economical life.

American Gothic is an painting by Grant Wood. Painted in 1930 , the work of Grant Wood is now a full-fledged icon of the American culture. It is certainly one of the most famous American paintings, currently present at the Art Institute of Chicago. It represents a man holding a fork and a woman, they are front of a house in Gothic style. The house represents a cottage that Wood had seen in the small town in southern Iowa, his native country.

The 2 figures represent a farmer and his unmarried daughter. They were modeled by Wood's dentist and his sister.

The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron mimicking XIXth century American and the couple are in the traditional roles of men and women, the man’s pitchfork symbolizing hard labor, and the flowers over the woman’s right shoulder suggesting domesticity.

...