American Gothic Grant Wood Analysis

In 1930, an artist by the name of Grant Wood painted American Gothic. The painting consists of a man and woman who happened to be brother and sister in real life. Two modes of analysis are used to compose this art analysis. A biographical analysis is used because the artist, Grant Wood, grew up and lived on a farm for most of his life in Iowa. By painting the background to look as if it were set on a farm, Grant Wood references the setting back to the time of living on the farm in Iowa. A contextual analysis was also used to write this analysis. In 1930, the Great Depression was occurring and people in the United States were suffering greatly. The Great Depression made people’s lives stressful and unhappy. The painting depicts a woman and man with very grim faces which can be inferred to the hard times people faced during the Great Depression.

The painting American Gothic depicts two people that are middle aged on a farm.

One person is a female, and the other person is a male. The female has blonde colored hair, and it is put up off her neck behind her head. She has light colored eyes that are squinty. Her skin is more on the scale of being fair than dark. Her clothing is of dull colors. She wears a black top that has a white collar with a brown patterned vest on top of the shirt. The male is taller than the female in the painting. He does not have much hair on his head. He is wearing grey glasses, and his clothes are dull colored as well. He is wearing a striped white shirt with blue overalls and a black jacket on top. His skin is pail similar to the woman’s skin color. In his right hand, he is holding a farming tool called a pitch fork. In the background of the painting, there is a house that is painted an off-white color. There is also a dark red building with a brown roof that is in the background. In the back behind the red building, there are green trees that make up the rest of the

background.
American Gothic is a painting that was painted on beaverboard, and the medium used to paint the painting was oil. The liquid medium, oil, is pigment that is mixed with lint seed oil with a certain type of vehicle, usually turpentine. The style of this artwork is representational art because one can easily tell what is laid out in front of us. The painting is considered a portrait.
Elements of art are used to make the painting what it looks like. Lines are identifiable paths created by a point that is moving in space. Actual lines are used in American Gothic to create the houses in the background, the circular lens on the man’s glasses, and the pitch fork. Curving lines are used to create the trees in the background, and a sharp, jagged line is used to make the trim around the woman’s vest that she wears over her shirt. Shapes can be of a geometric form or of an organic form. The windows on the house are made of geometric shapes like rectangles. The pin on the woman’s collar is a circle which is also a geometric shape. Organic shapes are the people because they are not painted with straight lines to make a geometric shape.
There are principles of design that are used to compose the painting. Patterns are used in the window of the house, the woman’s vest, and on the man’s shirt. In the window on the house, there are white polka dots that form a pattern. On the vest, there is a pattern made out of white circles, and on the man’s shirt, there are stripes that make up a pattern. Balance is used in the siding on the house. The lines are symmetrically balanced on each side of the top floor siding. Atmospheric perspective is implied in the background. The buildings in the background and the trees at to the atmospheric perspective.