The Couple with the Pitchfork
American Gothic from Easel to Icon
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Princeton University Press
Publishing:22nd Dec '26
£42.00
This title is due to be published on 22nd December, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A rich, evolving history of one of the most recognized couples in the world
In this abundantly illustrated book, award-winning art historian Wanda Corn tracks the fortunes and vicissitudes of Grant Wood’s American Gothic, his realist painting of a rural man and woman posed stiffly before a modest white house with a gothic-styled window, made in 1930. She explores Wood’s scrappy formation as a disadvantaged midwestern artist and his unexpected, overnight fame when American Gothic premiered at the Art Institute of Chicago and was purchased for the museum’s collection. After a close look at the painting’s volatile reputation over its first thirty years, Corn turns to that historic moment in the 1960s when the couple with their pitchfork left the museum and journeyed into the streets. Shedding their preciousness as art, they became a versatile, free-floating image open to reuse and reinterpretation. That moment also found Corn beginning her long career in art history, and she interweaves her story with that of the couple’s evolving appearances in pop art, cartoons, advertisements, and grassroots reenactments. She offers compelling explanations for the painting’s entry into the pantheon of cult visual images. Today, Wood’s couple stands alongside other art icons: Whistler’s mother, Rodin’s thinker, Hokusai’s wave, Munch’s screamer, and the enigmatic beauty in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.
A highly readable and personalized study of a painter and the work he would forever be tied to, The Couple with the Pitchfork: American Gothic from Easel to Icon sheds critical light on the cultural forces that transformed an image with humble roots into a global icon whose reach and charisma extends far beyond the world of art.
"[A] splendid history of the painting and its legacy. . . . The Couple with the Pitchfork is art history at its best— smart, accessible, and utterly captivating."---Jim Kelly, AirMail
"[The] book . . . makes us look again at a painting we thought we all already knew everything about. The Couple with the Pitchfork is an unbelievable book."---Megan Fox Kelly, Reading the Art World
"The Couple with the Pitchfork is a rich examination of Wood’s work of art and of the icon that had become embedded in the world’s cultural life. It’s also a book that looks beyond art to what makes people people."---Patrick T. Reardon, Third Coast Review
"Why, Corn wants to know, did this painting become so iconic?. . . . Corn’s explanation for American Gothic’s popularity is that it shows the archetype of marriage, a motif that can be traced from Egyptian princes to Etruscan terra cottas to Dutch golden age portraits, rendered in an accessible manner for the modern era."---Kelly Presutti, Art in America
"Art historian Corn expertly uses Grant Wood’s 1930 painting American Gothic as a lens through which to explore artistic and cultural debates. . . . The author draws on a dazzlingly diverse range of homages to and parodies of the painting . . . to unpack how the painting has served as a site for American identity to be negotiated and remade. It’s an illuminating, wide-ranging examination of the many afterlifes of a classic image." * Publishers Weekly *
"In this penetrating, deeply researched study, [Wanda Corn] expands on work she began in 1981, explicating the image, recounting [Grant] Wood’s personal and professional life, and tracing the painting’s reception and transformation from 1930 to the present. . . . A fresh, engaging look at an iconic artwork." * Kirkus Reviews starred review *
"[Wanda Corn] effectively makes her point about the image’s ubiquity in visual culture. . . . The couple once thought to portray a rigid provincialism has proved extraordinarily flexible and open to endless reinterpretation."---Barbara Spindel, Wall Street Journal
ISBN: 9780691286341
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
312 pages