Grant Wood : American Gothic And Other Fables

This comprehensive study of Grant Wood (1891-1942) provides fresh insight into the career of one of the key figures of 20th-century American art. Working primarily in the traditional genres of portraiture and landscape, Wood infused his paintings with a palpable tension that is grounded in the profound epistemological and social upheavals of his time.

Exploring Wood's oeuvre from a variety of perspectives, this book presents the artist's work in all of its subtle complexity and eschews the idea that Wood can be categorized simply as a Regionalist painter. Various essays contextualize Wood's work within a much larger art-historical framework than has previously been considered; various topics are studied such as the artist's literary influences, the role of gender identity in his paintings, and the parallels between Wood's work and the contemporaneous European movements of Surrealism, Neue Sachlichkeit, Precisionism, Art Deco design, and the Arts and Crafts movement.