REGIONALIST - GRANT WOOD

Inspiration From American Gothic Grant Wood: As a writer and Screenwriter I am constantly looking for new sources of inspiration. I've found that one of the best places to find that inspiration is in Art. Having bourne this out with The Singing Butler Screenplay (based on Jack Vettriono's famous work), it is of course a prime example. Another potential writing, or screenwriting project, could centre around the characters in American Gothic by Grant Wood.

Regionalist Grant Wood (b.1891, Iowa. d.1942)

Grant Wood painted what is considered to be one of the world’s most famous works of art ‘American Gothic’. It therefore arguably goes a long way in answering the question: Just what is Grant Wood ’s most famous piece of art? In 1930 Wood painted the work in his Cedar Rapids studio located on the second floor of a late 19th century carriage house in the State of Iowa.

This was his home and studio where he lived and worked, and it is now owned by the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (CRMA). The museum contains more than 200 works by the artist, which is the world’s largest collection.

American Gothic is an example of Regionalism, a movement that was aggressively opposed to European abstract art. As an exponent of Regionalism, Wood depicted his subjects in the painting in the representational style of rural America.

All rights reserved by The Art Institute of Chicago

and VAGA, New York, NY

Thus, the painting has become famously embedded in popular American culture and open to different interpretations. These range from satirical narrow-minded repression of American Midwestern culture to glorification of the moral values associated with rural America.