Grant Wood: A Life

Grant Wood: A Life

He claimed to be â€œthe plainest kind of fellow you can find. There isnâ€™t a single thing Iâ€™ve done, or experienced,â€ said Grant Wood, â€œthatâ€™s been even the least bit exciting.â€

Wood was one of Americaâ€™s most famous regionalist painters; to love his work was the equivalent of loving America itself. In his time, he was an â€œalmost mythical figure,â€ recognized most supremely for his hard-boiled farm scene, American Gothic, a painting that has come to reflect the essence of Americaâ€™s traditional valuesâ€”a simple, decent, homespun tribute to our lost agrarian age.

In this major new biography of Americaâ€™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 â€œthe booboisieâ€ 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 â€œmanliest of menâ€); 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 Woodâ€™s homosexuality and how his studied masculinity was a ruse that shaped his work.

Here is Woodâ€™s life and work explored more deeply and insightfully than ever before. Drawing on letters, the artistâ€™s unfinished autobiography, his sisterâ€™s writings, and many never-before-seen documents, Evansâ€™s book is a dimensional portrait of a deeply complicated artist who became a â€œNational Symbol.â€ It is as well a portrait of the American art scene at a time when Americaâ€™s Calvinistic spirit and provincialism saw Europe as decadent and artists were divided between red-blooded patriotic men and â€œhothouse aesthetes.â€

Thomas Hart Benton said of Grant Wood: â€œWhen 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 Woodâ€™s works.â€
Country USA
Brand Knopf
Manufacturer Knopf
Binding Hardcover
Color Multicolor
ReleaseDate 2010-10-05
UnitCount 1
Format Deckle Edge
EANs 9780307266293

Country	USA
Brand	Knopf
Manufacturer	Knopf
Binding	Hardcover
Color	Multicolor
ReleaseDate	2010-10-05
UnitCount	1
Format	Deckle Edge
EANs	9780307266293

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