# data[].attributes.body
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)

Man with Broken Nose (1863-64)

Rodin was able to manipulate plaster for bumps and create changes

Sculpture is a medium human form in 3D but has no color or no landscape

# data[].attributes.body
It was the start of a group of modern artists that emerged in the 1900s. Their works of art used strong colors and would have realistic values of Impressionism

# data[].attributes.body
- Henri Matisse was mainly known to be a painter but was also a printmaker and sculptor.
- Part of the Fauvism Movement; the use of color and shadows played an important part because it would later depict how future artists

# data[].attributes.body
- Part of Fauvism movement
- House a L'Estaque, 1908
- Light helps show volume
- Braque materializes space (void) into a kind of simple geometry

# data[].attributes.headline
Henri Matisse, Joy of Life (Bonheur de Vivre), 1906

# data[].attributes.subject
Henri Matisse, Joy of Life (Bonheur de Vivre), 1906

# data[].attributes.body
- Large scale painting: 5' 6 1/2" x 7' 9 3/4"
- Depicts Arcadian landscape, filled with colored forest, meadow and sky with nude figures who are both in motion and at rest
- Has characteristics from Cezanne's painting, The Large Bathers (possibly an inspiration)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Barnes Collection Online - Henri Matisse: Le Bonheur de vivre, also called The Joy of Life

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Barnes Collection Online - Henri Matisse: Le Bonheur de vivre, also called The Joy of Life

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Barnes Foundation Collection: Henri Matisse. Le Bonheur de vivre, also called The Joy of Life -- The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia is home to one of the world's greatest collections of impressionist, post-impressionist and early modern paintings.

# data[].attributes.body
- Has long standing tradition, habits of mind, exploration of formal problems of pictorial method and design
- 1914: Germans nationalize "expressionism" and change its definition
- Die Brücke THE BRIDGE: 1905-1913; German expressionist artists, one of the founding members were Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel and among others. Later Emil Nolde joined the group

# data[].attributes.body
- Self Portrait with model, 1910
- Unknown if the model is in a relationship
- Little detail, only some buttons and pocket
- Founding member of Die Brüke group of German expressionists

# data[].attributes.body
Objects are seen the same but from different points of view

There was a scientific approach to how we see things

Perception is the intellects capacity to conceptualize form

With cubism, we go back to what  we know about modern life

Analytic cubism: analyze reality

Synthetic Cubism

Later phase of Cubism. Paintings and drawing were being made out of objects and shapes and cut from paper and other materials. They are able to represent various parts of a subject.

Picasso created the guitar in 1912

# data[].attributes.body
Most known artist in the cubism movement

Les Demoiselles D'Avignon, 1907 (pictured above)

Picasso would break down figures (solid) in planar components

Picasso didn't go to war, instead he created art for people that were suffering from the war

# data[].attributes.headline
Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912

# data[].attributes.subject
Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912

# data[].attributes.body
First collage

Picasso uses anything that he had on hand

# data[].attributes.body
Pointillism, Fauvism

Futurism in Italy started during this time, 1909-1914

Electricity killed the night

Oil Painting

Balla inspired this by the street lights in the Piazza Termini in Rome

# data[].attributes.body
Piet Mondrian

Not only was he part of futurism but was part of the De Stijil movement among other great artists, designers and architects

The Red Tree, 1908

Synthetic or Analytical cubism

Mondrian Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow, 1930

Oil on canvas

Abstract art using minimal brushstrokes and lines.

# data[].attributes.body
Was a furniture designer and architect during the De Stijl

Created Schroeder House

Built in 1924

Considered to be a masterpiece of De Stijl movement

The house is known to be full of the unconventional ideas of what the normal house should be.

Truss Schroder (owner of the house) helped during the design process of the home, deciding that the home should be simple and open

Red and Blue Chair, 1918

Chair represents one of the first explorations of the De Stijl art movement

Made of painted solid beech wood

Rietveld created the chair on the purpose that he was able to manipulate the rectilinear volumes just like he did with architecture

# data[].attributes.body
Dada consists of anti-art beliefs

Its three key locations were:

Switzerland

New York

Germany

The official beginning of DADA was in the middle of World War I (1916)

The futurists wrote manifestos and movements

The facets of DADA were the reaction against war and violence. They were anti-war and anti-Burgois

# data[].attributes.body
Zurich, Switzerland

Hugo Ball

German poet (in Zurich)

"everything is childlike.. symbolic in opposition to senilities of the world of grown-ups"

Disorder, anarchy, spontaneity, fantasy, instinct, ridiculousness

The Cabaret Voltaire

Founded by Hugo Ball in 1916

They were the exiles from the war

"to remind the world that there are independent men, beyond war and nationalism, who live for other ideals" - Ball

# data[].attributes.body
Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912 (pictured above)

Cubist/futurist forms that instead of celebrating the "mechanized world" he was critical of the power the machine has over man

Marcel Duchamp never truly considered himself a Dadaist but still acted like one

# data[].attributes.body
First artist to start ready-mades

"The work of art could be painted, constructed, or merely 'designated'"

A manufactured, already existing, object that is elevated to an art object

Duchamp's most famous readymades was called Fountain, 1917

Submitted to a tv show after he paid the fee

Producers did not like the readymade

# data[].attributes.body
Created what is called "Rayographs"

Rayographs were made without a camera where Ray placed objects that were in circular forms and used them directly on a sheet of photosensitized paper and exposing it to the light

Ray was an artists from the United States

He was a Dada artist

Dadaism became concerned with political issues in Germany

He used caricatures and satire as subjects and portrayed them in collages and photo collages

Man Ray, The Gift, 1921

Iron with nail, nonsense gift, humorous

Famous ready made sculpture

# data[].attributes.body
Andre Breton

Wrote the Surrealist Manifesto in 19124

Automatism was the process of tapping the unconscious; writing in a trancelike state and registering the involuntary, vivid images that tumbled out

Andre Masson, Battle of Fishes, 1927

Gesso, Oil Paint, Pencil, Sand, Charcoal

Applied gesso freely on the areas of the canvas as well as throwing sand on it

Paranoic-Critical Method is the spontaneous assimilation of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectification of delirious phenomena

# data[].attributes.body
Illusionistic trend

Hans Bellmer, Ball Joint, 1934

Originally known as Ball Joint; later renamed as The Doll

Perverse love... Mad Love

Women was the object of sublime love

It was the unconscious revelation

Alberto Giacometti, Woman with Her Throat Cut, 1932 (pictured above)

Conveys violence

Giacometti had dreams about killing women but never actually went through with it. Instead he made it into art

# data[].attributes.body
Founded by Walter Gropius and later joined:

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Paul Klee

Wassily Kandinsky

Bauhaus Dessau is known as the international style

It was a new attitude towards design. It was the affirmation of the living environment of machines and vehicles

Organic designs of things based on their own present-day laws, without romantic gloss and wasteful frivolity

There was a limitation to characteristic, primary forms and colors readily accessible to everyone

There was enthusiasm for machines, painstaking analysis on objects and standardized elements

# data[].attributes.body
The painters of the American Scene were known as romantic realists who wanted to convey emotion

Edward Hopper

Nighthawks, 1942

Oil on canvas painting

Four people in a downtown diner viewed through the diner's large glass window

Makes you question the relationship, could be the secret lover.

Regionalists

Most famous painting in this genre was Grant Wood's American Gothic, 1930 (pictured above)

Wood was at the time visiting Iowa and because he liked the farmhouse in the background he created this painting

Social Realism

MoMA was created during this time (1929)

WPA Federal Art Project

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Image actions

Show this image

American Gothic

Date:

1930

Artist:

Grant Wood
American, 1891-1942

Related

Related

About this artwork

In American Gothic, Grant Wood directly evoked images of an earlier generation by featuring a farmer and his daughter posed stiffly and dressed as if they were, as the artist put it, "tintypes from my old family album." They stand outside of their home, built in an 1880s style known as Carpenter Gothic. Wood had seen a similar farmhouse during a visit to Eldon, Iowa.

When it was exhibited at the Art Institute in 1930, the painting became an instant sensation, its ambiguity prompting viewers to speculate about the figures and their story. Many understood the work to be a satirical comment on midwesterners out of step with a modernizing world. Yet Wood intended it to convey a positive image of rural American values, offering a vision of reassurance at the beginning of the Great Depression.

Status

On View, Gallery 263

Department

Arts of the Americas

Artist

Grant Wood

Title

American Gothic

Place

United States (Artist's nationality:)

1930

Medium

Oil on Beaver Board

Inscriptions

Signed and dated lower right on overalls: GRANT / WOOD / 1930

Dimensions

78 × 65.3 cm (30 3/4 × 25 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Friends of American Art Collection

Reference Number

1930.934

Extended information about this artwork

"Prize Awards in the Annual American Exhibition," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 24, no. 9 (Dec. 1930): 120.

Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 25, no. 2 (Feb. 1931): cover (ill.), 8, 25.

"Loans to Other Museums and Institutions," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago: Report for the Year 1931, 26 no. 2 (Feb. 1932): 70.

"Loans to Other Museums and Institutions," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago: Report for the Year 1933 28, no. 3 (Mar. 1934): 71, 73.

"Loans to Other Museums and Institutions," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago: Report for the Year 1934 29, no. 3 (Mar. 1935): 72.

"Loans to Other Museums and Institutions," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago: Report for the Year 1935 30, no. 3 (Mar. 1936): 68.

Frederick A. Sweet, "Half a Century of American Art," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 33, no. 6 (No 1939): 97.

Anita Brenner, "Is There An American Art?," The New York Times Magazine (November 23, 1941), ill. p. 13.

Frederick S. Wight, Milestones of American Painting in Our Century, introduction by Lloyd Goodrich (Boston: The Institute of Contemporary Art with Chanticleer Press, New York, 1949), 30, 74, ill. pl. 21, 75.

Aline B. Louchheim, "A New Yorker Visits the Art Institute," The Art Institute of Chicago Quarterly 46, no. 2 (Apr. 1, 1952): 23.

"People and Events: Portraits on Television," The Art Institute of Chicago Quarterly 50, no. 2 (Apr. 1, 1956): 39.

Henri Dorra, The American Muse (Viking Press, 1961), 124, ill. p. 156.

"Summer Gallery Talks," Calendar of the Art Institute of Chicago 65, no. 3 (May-Aug. 1971): 18.

"Lecturer's Choice: Fifteen Minute Gallery Talks for Summer," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 67, no. 3 (May-June 1973): 11.

Matthew Baigell, The American Scene: American Painting of the 1930s (Praeger Publishers, 1974), 18, 109, 110, 111, ill. 1, 12.

"Public Lectures," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 69, no. 4 (Jul-Aug. 1975): 8.

"Public Lectures," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 73, no. 5/6 (Sep-Dec. 1979): 14.

Wanda Corn, "The painting that became a symbol of a nation's spirit," Smithsonian 11, 8 (November 1980), 84-96, ill. p. 85.

Wanda M. Corn, Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision, exh. cat. (Minneapolis Institute of Arts/Yale University Press, 1982), 3, 25-26, 33, 35, 60, 128-142, pl. 32.

Wanda M. Corn, "The Birth of a National Icon: Grant Wood's American Gothic," The Art Institute of Chicago Centennial Lectures, Museum Studies 10 (Art Institute of Chicago/Contemporary Books, Inc., 1983), 253-275, fig. 1.

Davenport Museum of Art, IA, Grant Wood: An American Master Revealed (Davenport Museum of Art/Pomegranate Books, 1995), 24, 69-73, 96-98, cat. 16, pl. 16.

Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth-Century Painting and Sculpture, selected by James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein (Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), 67, ill.

James M. Dennis, Renegade Regionalists: The Modern Independence of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry (University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 14, 19-20, 100-02, fig. 7.

Lea Rosson DeLong, Grant Wood's Main Street: Art, Literature and the American Midwest, exh. cat. (Ames, Iowa: Brunnier Art Museum, University Museums, 2004), 17-18, 24, 27-29, 39, 97, 104, 106, 159, 203, 205, 207, fig. 12.

Thomas Hoving, American Gothic: The Biography of Grant Wood's American Masterpiece (Chamberlain Bros., 2005).

Stephen Biel, American Gothic: A Life of America's Most Famous Painting (W.W. Norton & Co., 2005).

Sue Taylor, "Grant Wood's Family Album," American Art 19, 2 (Summer 2005): 48-67.

Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 79.

Laura Hoptman, "Wyeth: Christina's World," One on One (The Museum of Modern Art, 2012), 4 (ill.).

Duane Preble Emeritus et al., Prebles' Artforms (Pearson, 2013), 11th ed., 428. (ill.).

Chantal Georgel, "Millet," (Citadelles et Mazenod, 2014), (ill.).

Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017), 123.

Judith A. Barter, "Prolog: Ein neue Welt der Kunst," in Es war einmal in Amerika - 300 Jahre US-amerikanische Kunst [Once Upon a Time in America: Three Centuries of American Art], eds. Barbara Schaefer and Anita Hachmann (Cologne: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud/Wienand Verlag, 2018), 24, fig. 10 (ill.).

Andrew Graham-Dixon, "'American Gothic' - Grant Wood's Midwestern mystery," Christie's, Oct. 22, 2019, https://www.christies.com/features/American-Gothic-A-Midwestern-mystery-10143-1.aspx, (ill.).

Marta Ruiz del Arbol, ed., Georgia O'Keeffe, exh. cat. (Madrid: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2021), 66-67, fig. 45 (ill).

Sarah Rose Sharp, "How Grant Wood's 'American Gothic' Continues to Inspire Artists," Hyperallergic, Mar. 30, 2022, https://hyperallergic.com/719745/how-grant-woods-american-gothic-continues-to-inspire-artists, (ill.).

Art Institute of Chicago, The Forty-third Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, Oct. 30-Dec. 14, 1930, cat. 207, ill.

Cedar Rapids, IA, Feb. 1931.

Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Albright Art Gallery, Twenty-Fifth Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, Apr. 26-June 22, 1931, cat. 139, ill. p. 26.

San Diego Fine Art Gallery, Show of Contemporary Eastern Painting [probably], c. June 1932, no cat.; Santa Barbara, CA, Faulkner Memorial Art Gallery, c. Aug. 1932.

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Paintings and Prints by Chicago Artists, Feb. 28-Mar. 30, 1933, cat. 37, ill. frontispiece.

Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1-Nov. 1, 1933, cat. 666, pl. 92.

Washington, DC, Phillips Collection, Nov. 1933-Feb. 1934.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Mar. 31-Apr. 10, 1934.

Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1-Nov. 1, 1934, cat. 716.

Chicago, Lakeside Press Galleries, Loan Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings by Grant Wood, Feb-Mar. 1935, cat. 33, ill. p. 23.

New York, Ferargil Galleries, An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Grant Wood, Mar-Apr. 1935, cat. 15.

Kansas City, MO, William R. Nelson Gallery, Oct. 2-Nov. 8, 1935.

Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, The Centennial Exposition, June 6-Nov. 29, 1936, cat. 15, ill. p. 64.

Chicago Woman's Club, Jan. 20, 1937.

Bloomington, IL, Central Illinois Art Exposition, Mar. 19-Apr. 8, 1939, cat. 106, ill. p. 29.

Iowa City, Fine Arts Festival, Iowa Union Lounge, University of Iowa, Exhibition of Paintings by Grant Wood and Marvin D. Cone, July 16-23, 1939, cat. 23.

Art Institute of Chicago, Half a Century of American Art, Nov. 16, 1939-Jan. 7, 1940, cat. 178, pl. 46.

Bloomfield Hills, MI, Cranbrook Academy of Art, May 17-June 6, 1940.

Northampton, MA, Smith College Museum of Art, American Art: Aspects of American Painting, 1900-1940, June 12-22, 1940, cat. 33.

Worcester Art Museum, A Decade of American Painting 1930-1940, Feb. 18-Mar. 22, 1942, ill. p. 23.

Cedar Rapids Art Association, Grant Wood Memorial Exhibition, Sept. 1-Oct. 1, 1942, no cat. See Cedar Rapids Gazette, 9/6/1942.

Art Institute of Chicago, Memorial Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Grant Wood, included in the Fifty-third Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, Oct. 29-Dec. 12, 1942, cat. 2, color ill. frontispiece.

New York, Museum of Modern Art, 20th Century Portraits, Dec. 8, 1942-Jan. 24, 1943, p. 145, ill. p. 99.

Baltimore, MD, Feb. 12-Mar. 7, 1943.

Worcester Art Museum, Mar. 17-Apr. 19, 1943.

Boston, The Institute of Modern Art, Ten Americans, Oct. 20-Nov. 21, 1943, cat. 29, ill.

Saginaw, MI, Saginaw Museum of Art, An Exhibition of American Painting from Colonial Times until Today, Jan. 10-Feb. 15, 1948, cat. 71, pl. 13.

Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Famous American Paintings, Oct. 9-31, 1948, n.pag., ill.

Boston, Institute of Contemporary Art, Milestones of American Painting in Our Century, c. Jan. 2-c. Mar. 3, 1949, cat. 21.

Montreal, Canada, Mar. 18-Apr. 20, 1949.

Canadian National Exhibition Art Exhibit, Aug. 26-Sept. 10, 1949.

Beloit, WI, Beloit College, Oct. 11-Nov. 11, 1949.

Dayton, OH, Dayton Art Institute, The Artist and His Family, Mar. 3-Apr. 1950, cat. 40.

Cedar Rapids, IA, Coe College, Centennial Exhibition, May 15-June 9, 1952, cat. 24.

New York, Wildenstein, Landmarks in American Art, 1670-1950, Feb. 26-Mar. 28, 1953, cat. 50, ill.

Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, 125 Years of American Art, Sept. 15-Oct. 11, 1953, cat. 59, ill. p. 18.

Dubuque, IA, Dubuque Art Association, Thirty Years of Grant Wood, Feb. 15-Feb. 23, 1955, cat. 9.

Des Moines, IA, Des Moines Art Center, Communicating Art from Midwest Collections: American and European Paintings and Sculpture, 1835-1955, Oct. 13-Nov. 6, 1955, cat. 20, ill.

Davenport, IA, Davenport Municipal Art Gallery, Grant Wood and the American Scene, Feb. 3-24, 1957, cat. 5, ill. p. 5.

Lake Forest, IL, Durand Art Institute, Lake Forest College, A Century Of American Painting: Masterpieces Loaned by The Art Institute of Chicago, June 10-16, 1957, cat. 24.

Brooklyn Museum of Art, Face of America: The History of Portraiture in the United States, Nov. 13, 1957-Jan. 26, 1958, cat. 92, fig. 41.

Washington, DC, Corcoran Gallery of Art, The American Muse: Parallel Trends in Literature and Art, Apr. 4-May 17, 1959, cat. 130.

Art Institute of Chicago, Two Centuries of American Art, 1750-1950, Oct. 1, 1959-Jan. 10, 1960, no cat. [downloadable checklist available].

Art Institute of Chicago, Art in Illinois, In Honor of the Illinois Sesquicentennial, June 15-Sept. 8, 1968, p. 10.

Art Institute of Chicago, 100 Artists, 100 Years: Alumni of the SAIC, Centennial Exhibition, Nov. 23, 1979-Jan. 20, 1980, cat. 112, ill. p. 35.

New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision, June 16-Sept. 4, 1983, cat. 25, pl. 32; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Sept. 25, 1983-Jan. 1, 1984; Art Institute of Chicago, Jan. 21-Apr. 15, 1984; San Francisco, M. H. DeYoung Memorial Museum, May 12-Aug. 12, 1984.

Omaha, NE, Joslyn Art Museum, Grant Wood: An American Master Revealed, Dec. 10, 1995-Feb. 25, 1996, cat. 14, pl. 16; Davenport, IA, Davenport Museum of Art, Mar. 23-Sept. 8, 1996; Worcester, MA, Worcester Art Museum, Oct. 6-Dec. 31, 1996.

New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The American Century: Art and Culture, 1900-1950, Apr. 23-Aug. 22, 1999, cat. 435, color ill. p. 225.

Cedar Rapids, IA, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Grant Wood at 5 Turner Alley, Sept. 10-Dec. 4, 2005.

Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Grant Wood's Studio: Birthplace of American Gothic, Mar. 10-June 11, 2006.

Des Moines Art Center, After Many Springs: Art in the Midwest in the 1930s, Jan. 30-Mar. 30, 2009.

Art Institute of Chicago, America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s, June 5-Sept. 18, 2016; Paris, Musee de l'Orangerie, Oct. 15, 2016-Jan. 30, 2017; London, Royal Academy, Feb. 25-June 4, 2017, cat. 47.

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables, Mar. 2-June 10, 2018, no cat no., pl. 33, checklist p. 259.

The artist; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, November 1930.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
American Gothic | The Art Institute of Chicago

# data[].attributes.body
Information was taken during notes from class

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/265487#:~:text=Man%20Ray%20made%20his%20%22rayographs,and%20exposing%20it%20to%20light.