american gothic
... For the artist, American Gothic, produced new accomplishments. ... It is an American icon of country Iowa and America in general. ... html) Seery states that Wood often called for "non-urban" forms of artistic expression as a means to represent the politics of industrialization and its effects on the American Midwest, but most critics look at the subject of the painting rather than Grant artistic intent or political content. ... He traveled to Europe in 1928 to study the Gothic Northern Renaissance portraits for line and symmetry, and it is these on which American Gothic is based. This is not only apparent in the elongated and stylized figures of the man, woman and pitchfork in the painting, but also the Gothic framing of the farmhouse window between them, as if the window itself had been designed by the architects of Chartres, France. ... The symmetry of the windows compared to the Gothic window above suggest a Pantheonic view, yet are abstracted from symmetry by the difference in height of the two figures staring out at the front of the painting, and a bit of barn behind the shoulder of the autocratic father. ... Even the curving spines of the Gothic window flow upward, and this is surrounded by the vertical planking of the Iowa farmhouse. The lines of the oval faces in particular flow up and out, opposite in direction from the curved spine of the Gothic window. ... Whatever Woods intent is subject to debate since his own comments on American Gothic are ambiguous.