Download or read book Grant Wood s Iowa written by Wende Elliott and published by The Countryman Press. This book was released on 2013-05-06 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Be transported into the private and cherished world of this celebrated American icon with tour of Grant Wood's home state.. Grant Wood, Iowa native, iconic Regionalist American artist, certainly left his mark on his home state. Wood’s American Gothic is one of America’s most recognizable paintings, his boyhood home is a registered landmark, and collections of his work grace museums far and near. Now you can tour his state with five itineraries that provide a detailed exploration of the historical context for his work. Grant Wood’s Iowa explores his role in the art world with self-guided museum tours, detailed discussions of specific works, information on the finest lodging and dining in the state, and, finally, “green” travel options, including rural bed and breakfasts, restaurants offering local organic menus, nightlife with local artists, and nature hikes to experience the landscape that inspired Wood. You’ll be transported into the private and cherished world of this celebrated American icon.
Download or read book Artist in Iowa written by Darrell Garwood and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1971 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: October 2006
Download or read book Grant Wood written by R. Tripp Evans and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He claimed to be “the plainest kind of fellow you can find. There isn’t a single thing I’ve done, or experienced,” said Grant Wood, “that’s been even the least bit exciting.” Wood was one of America’s most famous regionalist painters; to love his work was the equivalent of loving America itself. In his time, he was an “almost mythical figure,” recognized most supremely for his hard-boiled farm scene, American Gothic, a painting that has come to reflect the essence of America’s traditional values—a simple, decent, homespun tribute to our lost agrarian age. In this major new biography of America’s most acclaimed, and misunderstood, regionalist painter, Grant Wood is revealed to have been anything but plain, or simple . . . R. Tripp Evans reveals the true complexity of the man and the image Wood so carefully constructed of himself. Grant Wood called himself a farmer-painter but farming held little interest for him. He appeared to be a self-taught painter with his scenes of farmlands, farm workers, and folklore but he was classically trained, a sophisticated artist who had studied the Old Masters and Flemish art as well as impressionism. He lived a bohemian life and painted in Paris and Munich in the 1920s, fleeing what H. L. Mencken referred to as “the booboisie” of small-town America. We see Wood as an artist haunted and inspired by the images of childhood; by the complex relationship with his father (stern, pious, the “manliest of men”); with his sister and his beloved mother (Wood shared his studio and sleeping quarters with his mother until her death at seventy-seven; he was forty-four). We see Wood’s homosexuality and how his studied masculinity was a ruse that shaped his work. Here is Wood’s life and work explored more deeply and insightfully than ever before. Drawing on letters, the artist’s unfinished autobiography, his sister’s writings, and many never-before-seen documents, Evans’s book is a dimensional portrait of a deeply complicated artist who became a “National Symbol.” It is as well a portrait of the American art scene at a time when America’s Calvinistic spirit and provincialism saw Europe as decadent and artists were divided between red-blooded patriotic men and “hothouse aesthetes.” Thomas Hart Benton said of Grant Wood: “When this new America looks back for landmarks to help gauge its forward footsteps, it will find a monument standing up in the midst of the wreckage . . . This monument will be made out of Grant Wood’s works.”
Download or read book Grant Wood s Studio written by Jane Milosch and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines "American Gothic" painter Grant Wood's period in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, describing his studio/residence and discussing his body of work, including not only his paintings, drawings, and prints but his work in wood, metal, and interior design.
Download or read book Plunder written by Cynthia Saltzman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The Christian Science Monitor's Ten Best Books of May "A highly original work of history . . . [Saltzman] has written a distinctive study that transcends both art and history and forces us to explore the connections between the two.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Wall Street Journal A captivatingstudy of Napoleon’s plundering of Europe’s art for the Louvre, told through the story of a Renaissance masterpiece seized from Venice Cynthia Saltzman’s Plunder recounts the fate of Paolo Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana, a vast, sublime canvas that the French, under the command of the young Napoleon Bonaparte, tore from a wall of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, on an island in Venice, in 1797. Painted in 1563 during the Renaissance, the picture was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Veronese had filled the scene with some 130 figures, lavishing color on the canvas to build the illusion that the viewers’ space opened onto a biblical banquet taking place on a terrace in sixteenth-century Venice. Once pulled from the wall, the Venetian canvas crossed the Mediterranean rolled on a cylinder; soon after, artworks commandeered from Venice and Rome were triumphantly brought into Paris. In 1801, the Veronese went on exhibition at the Louvre, the new public art museum founded during the Revolution in the former palace of the French kings. As Saltzman tells the larger story of Napoleon’s looting of Italian art and its role in the creation of the Louvre, she reveals the contradictions of his character: his thirst for greatness—to carry forward the finest aspects of civilization—and his ruthlessness in getting whatever he sought. After Napoleon’s 1815 defeat at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington and the Allies forced the French to return many of the Louvre’s plundered paintings and sculptures. Nevertheless, The Wedding Feast at Cana remains in Paris to this day, hanging directly across from the Mona Lisa. Expertly researched and deftly told, Plunder chronicles one of the most spectacular art appropriation campaigns in history, one that sheds light on a seminal historical figure and the complex origins of one of the great museums of the world.
Download or read book Grant Wood written by Grant Wood and published by Pomegranate. This book was released on 1995 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richly illustrated, the book examines Wood's modernist tendencies, ranging from abstract design principles to the lasting influence of paintings by Georges Seurat and German Neue Schlichkeit artists. Also provides the most detailed account available of the artists working methods.
Download or read book When Tillage Begins Other Arts Follow written by Lea Rosson DeLong and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Grant Wood written by James M. Dennis and published by Museum. This book was released on 1985 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Gothic written by Thomas Hoving and published by Chamberlain Brothers. This book was released on 2005 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story behind one of the most famous paintings in American art. The stern, sober countenance of the elderly farmer. The quiet, loyal character of his prim wife. Few other paintings are so instantly recognizable as Grant Wood's masterpiece American Gothic. Bestselling Chicago author Thomas Hoving brings to life Wood himself and illuminates, as only he can, the allure of this iconic painting. This is the lively biography of Grant Wood, whose roots grew deep in the heartland of America, a poor kid in a small Iowa town. His painting was a reflection of the place where he lived and the world he knew. It is also a biography of the painting itself, from its inspiration, to its controversial unveiling at a juried exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago-where it earned derision, praise, and a bronze medal-to its eventual acceptance and recognition as a true original work of art. Today it ranks with the Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch's The Scream as one of the most well-known (and parodied) paintings in the world-and it remains a beloved piece of Americana.
Download or read book Going Back to Iowa written by Janet A. Haven and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Going back to Iowa, for Grant Wood, was the formative experience in his artistic life. It was the return to his home state that prompted his painting to take a distinctive turn--towards regionalism, towards American subjects, towards the nineteenth century, towards an affectionate and yet ironic vision of his country and its history. His American audience is borne back alongside him, in time as well as in space, to an idealized world of memory; it is a place that most have not seen but one that we, as Americans, remember as our own. Grant Wood undeniably played to his American audience. He cast himself in the part of the midwestern farmer, a character in myth-laced agrarian world he had created. Almost without exception, Wood wore overalls for photographs. Most of the pictures preserved of the Iowan artist suggest that he spent his days in his studio clad in the sort of garb his famous farmer of American Gothic wore; that farmer, actually Wood's dentist, stands with calm menace, defending the home that immediately--upon its unveiling at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930-- become an icon for middle America with all its positive and negative connotations. It seems no coincidence that Wood, defender of the regionalism movement and public denouncer of artistic colonialism, would choose visually to ally himself with his most well-known creation, and by extension, with his farmer's implied stance. Not surprisingly, Americans and critics took Wood at his visual word; he was accepted as an American product, through and through, and his popularity peaked in the late 1930's. Wood's gentle satires and penetrating portraits of the mid-Westerners around him, as well as his sensual, geometric landscapes, endeared him to the American public of the Depression years. His vision of the American heartland seemed to touch a troubled country deeply; his paintings offered a land that responded to cultivation lusciously rather than blowing away in the tornados of the dustbowl, as well as farmers and their families who offered a bounty with round and blushing cheeks. On the surface, Wood appeared to critics somewhat naive: the hometown painter who offered a national vision of hope during the Depression years, but whose art became tired and untimely in the internationalist atmosphere following the second World War. Wood and his apparently down-home attitudes had been summarily dismissed by the critics by the half- century mark. What is interesting to consider is the reality of Grant Wood's experiences. Although largely a self-trained artist, Wood spent significant amounts of time painting in Europe. He organized his own show in Paris in the late 1920's; he traveled extensively during the 1930's promoting regionalism as an art movement and showing paintings in New York and Chicago galleries. Wood, for a small-town American of the 1920's and 30's, was surprisingly cosmopolitan and well-traveled. He is widely quoted as denouncing his European training and remarking that "all the really good ideas I'd ever had came to me while I was milking a cow. So I went back to Iowa" (qtd. in "Wood, Hard-Bitten"). It seems doubtful that Wood felt less than wholeheartedly about his "return from Bohemia" or the regionalist movement; quite to the contrary, he dedicated the last six years of his life to instilling the values of regionalism in the University of Iowa art program against strong resistance. However, Wood's critical reception at the time paid little attention to the nuances of the paintings he had given his country to look at; to his contemporaries, Wood was always the "painter in overalls" who promoted the imagined landscape of America and peopled it with identifiable types (Pickering). Much overlooked is the irony that Wood seems to have included in many of his paintings; it is the irony of affection and understanding, but also of distance and sophistication. Wood had seen the world outside Cedar Rapids, Iowa and had chosen to return to his home, but he surely did not forget the inevitable impressions and comparisons that come with travel. Perhaps most telling is Wood's Self-Portrait. Begun in 1932, the painter originally depicted himself in the trademark overalls; by 1940, he had painted the overalls out in favor of a v-necked shirt that appears to be something like an artist's smock. It is as if Wood wanted to leave an image of himself, not as a regionalist, nor as a farmer, but first as an artist, more complex than his regionalist rhetoric would account for. His gaze in this painting is direct and severe; there is none of the inviting friendliness of his publicity photographs in overalls. Nor, however, is there evident the protective menace of American Gothic's farmer. Wood no longer appears to be either defending or representing the mid-Western landscape stretching out behind him. In this portrait, he is fully the artist: a watcher, interpreter, and eller of tales, both a part of and apart from his subject matter. It seems that the showmanship for his stated cause of regionalism had given way to his true artistry: the rendering of timeless American stories through an affectionate and ironic eye.
Download or read book Harker s One room Schoolhouses written by Michael P. Harker and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Harker’s goal is to record Iowa’s historically significant architecture before it disappears forever. From Coon Center School no. 5 in Albert City to Pleasant Valley School in Kalona, North River School in Winterset to Douglas Center School in Sioux Rapids, and Iowa’s first school to Grant Wood’s first school, he has achieved this goal on a grand scale in Harker’s One-Room Schoolhouses.
Download or read book American Gothic written by Susan Wood and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From humble beginnings sketching Iowa’s cornfields and rolling hills as a child, Grant Wood became the father of regionalism, an artistic movement that celebrated the simple and real-life surroundings of the people. When studying art in Europe in the early 20th century, Grant couldn’t find a style that touched his heart quite right. Impressionism, cubism, and abstract art didn’t reflect his view of the world. It wasn’t until he stumbled upon Gothic art that Grant recognized something familiar. Back home in America, Grant asked his sister and his dentist to pose for what would become the founding, iconic image of regionalism and a uniquely American work of art. Grant’s art celebrated hard-working Americans who finally saw themselves in fine art. American Gothic is a picture-book biography that explores the birth of the famous painting, the movement that made it possible, and the artist who created it all.
Download or read book Latin American Migrations to the U S Heartland written by Linda Allegro and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2013-05-22 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection examines Latina/o immigrants and the movement of the Latin American labor force to the central states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa. Contributors look at outside factors affecting migration, including corporate agriculture, technology, globalization, and government. They also reveal how cultural affinities like religion, strong family ties, farming, and cowboy culture attract these newcomers to the Heartland. Throughout, essayists point to how hostile neoliberal policy reforms have made it difficult for Latin American immigrants to find social and economic stability. Filled with varied and eye-opening perspectives, Latin American Migrations to the U.S. Heartland reveals how identities, economies, and geographies are changing as Latin Americans adjust to their new homes, jobs, and communities. Contributors: Linda Allegro, Tisa M. Anders, Scott Carter, Caitlin Didier, Miranda Cady Hallett, Edmund Hamann, Albert Iaroi, Errol D. Jones, Jane Juffer, László J. Kulcsár, Janelle Reeves, Jennifer F. Reynolds, Sandi Smith-Nonini, and Andrew Grant Wood.
Download or read book Grant Wood s Secrets written by Sue Taylor and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2020-02-03 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Incorporating copious archival research and original close readings of American artist Grant Wood’s iconic as well as lesser-known works, Grant Wood’s Secrets reveals how his sometimes anguished psychology was shaped by his close relationship with his mother and how he channeled his lifelong oedipal guilt into his art. Presenting Wood’s abortive autobiography "Return from Bohemia" for the first time ever, Sue Taylor integrates the artist’s own recollections into interpretations of his art. As Wood dressed in overalls and boasted about his beloved Midwest, he consciously engaged in regionalist strategies, performing a farmer masquerade of sorts. In doing so, he also posed as conventionally masculine, hiding his homosexuality from his rural community. Thus, he came to experience himself as a double man. This book conveys the very real threats under which Wood lived and pays tribute to his resourceful responses, which were often duplicitous and have baffled art historians who typically take them at face value.
Download or read book My Brother Grant Wood written by Nan Wood Graham and published by State Historical Society Iowa. This book was released on 1993 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Camoupedia written by Roy R. Behrens and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An encyclopedic sourcebook for camouflage enthusiasts in all research areas who want to explore the history and development of camouflage (artistic, biological and military) since the 19th century. Richly illustrated with historic photographs, diagrams and drawings. Includes subject timeline, bibliography and index.
Download or read book Elizabeth Catlett written by Melanie Anne Herzog and published by Jacob Lawrence Series on American Artists. This book was released on 2005-10-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Catlett, born in Washington, DC, in 1915, is widely acknowledged as a major presence in African American art, and her work is celebrated as a visually eloquent expression of African American identity and pride in cultural heritage. But this is not the whole story. She has lived in Mexico for 50 years, as a citizen of that country since 1962, and she and her husband, artist Francisco Mora, have raised their children there. For 20 years she was a member of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphic Arts Workshop) and she was the first woman professor of sculpture at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Her extraordinary career has stretched from her years as a student at Howard University during the 1930s through various political and social movements--including the Chicago Renaissance of the 1940s, the Black Power and Black Arts movements, the Mexican Public Art Movement, and feminism--which have informed her art. This richly illustrated and informative monograph is the first to document the full range of Catlett's life and work. In addition to thoroughly researching primary source materials and to critiquing individual art works with sensitivity and erudition, the author has conducted numerous interviews with Catlett and has analyzed with clarity the political context of her work and her diverse sympathies and allegiances. Herzog examines key artistic influences and shows how Catlett transformed an extraordinary stylistic vocabulary into a socially charged statement. In tracing Catlett's long and continuing career as a graphic artist and sculptor in Mexico, Herzog explores an important period in Catlett's life between the 1950s and the 1970s about which almost nothing is known in the United States. She examines the "Mexicanness" in Catlett's work in its fluent relationship to the underlying and constant sense of African American identity she brought with her to Mexico. Herzog's solidly grounded interpretation offers a new way to understand Catlett's work and reveals this artist as a fascinating and pivotal intercultural figure whose powerful art manifests her firm belief that the visual arts can play a role in the construction of a meaningful identity, both transnational and ethnically grounded. Melanie Anne Herzogis associate professor of art history at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin.
