Excellent cultural history, using American Gothic to illuminate Americans’ evolving relationship with our heartland values.
The extraordinary odyssey of America’s most loved—and reviled—painting.
American Gothic was almost sent back to Grant Wood after he submitted it in 1930, the paint still wet, to the Art Institute of Chicago’s annual exhibition of American paintings and sculpture. Salvaged from the reject pile by a trustee, it won $300 and a bronze medal. The rest is history—and pretty amazing history at that, demonstrates Biel (History and Literature/Harvard; Down with the Old Canoe, 1996, etc.). Beginning with a present-day visit to the background house, which still stands at the edge of Eldon, Iowa, the author outlines the painting’s creation, its depiction of Wood’s sister and a local dentist (who did not pose at the same time), and the birth of its notoriety. American Gothic caused controversy almost immediately. Iowans were concerned about being depicted as sour, and moralists were concerned about the age difference between the man and the woman: Were they a husband and wife or not? Everyone assumed it was a satire, until Wood fanned the flames by claiming it wasn’t, therefore implying the subject matter was accurate. It was one of the most discussed works of art of the era. As America drew closer to WWII, the painting became transformed into an iconic image of steadfast resolution and individual freedom. Yet it has also been used to parody practically all aspects of American life; Biel sherpas us through some of the more trenchant examples in our own time, from the wedding scene of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (parodying Brad’s and Janet’s straitlaced background) to a New Yorker cartoon after 9/11 in which the figures’ “I ? NY” T-shirts suggested the heartland’s empathy for the city. Ironically, the author points out, in the 75 years since it was painted, “an image blasted for its inauthenticity [came] to assume the authenticity of folk art, the aura of genuine Americana, the authority of a national icon.”
Excellent cultural history, using American Gothic to illuminate Americans’ evolving relationship with our heartland values.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-393-05912-X
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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