Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables
Mar 2–June 10, 2018
Prints, Illustrations, and Commercial Projects
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Grant Wood’s experience as a decorative artist led him to view fine and applied art as being equal. In addition to designing textiles, an armchair and accompanying ottoman, and a Steuben glass vase, he illustrated two books and made cover images for eight others. The first book he illustrated was the 1935 children’s book Farm on the Hill, written by Madeline Darrough Horn. In 1936, he illustrated a deluxe publication of Sinclair Lewis’s novel Main Street (1920). As he often did with his paintings, he asked friends to pose for the illustrations, dressing them in costume for the occasion.
Wood’s desire to reach a broad audience with his art likewise led him to make lithographs through the Associated American Artists (AAA), which published and sold prints by major American artists in department stores and by direct mail for five dollars apiece. Making affordable art appealed to Wood, who completed eighteen lithographs for the AAA between 1937 and 1941.
Shrine Quartet, 1939
Grant Wood (1891–1942), Shrine Quartet, 1939. Lithograph: sheet, 12 x 16 in. (30.5 x 40.6 cm); image, 7 15⁄16 x 11 7⁄8 in. (20.2 x 30.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Arthur G. Altschul 78.28. © Figge Art Museum, successors to the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
The Shriners are a fraternal organization associated with the Freemasons who had four chapters in Iowa in the 1930s. With little regard for the specificities of place, culture, or faith, the group incorporated North African and Middle Eastern iconography in their customs and rituals. Here, Wood pictures a group of Shriners alongside some of their preferred imagery—pyramids, camels, and Moroccan fezzes adorned with scimitars, crescent moons, and stars. He pokes fun at both the pomp and pretensions of historical grandeur of his singing subjects by dramatically lighting them from below, creating large cast shadows that reveal them to be standing in front of a painted backdrop.