Autumn 2010

Tortured Artist

by Steven Biel

GRANT WOOD:
A Life.
By R. Tripp Evans.
Knopf.
402 pp. $37.50

Grant Wood’s life story, as he told it to the press and as many of his biographers have repeated it, went like this: Born in rural Iowa in 1891, Wood showed artistic precocity from an early age, flirted with bohemianism, turned his back on his benighted region under the sway of H. L. Mencken, traveled to France, grew a hideous beard, produced derivative Impressionist paintings, returned home, shaved off the beard, discovered a “native” subject matter and style (most famously in his 1930 painting American Gothic), and became America’s “artist in overalls.” Well adjusted, hard working, and clean living, the mature Wood was everything the stereotypical artist wasn’t. Most of all, he was masculine—“a sturdy, foursquare son of the Middle West,” as an admiring critic put it. The art, like the artist, was solid, straightforward, and robustly American.

To read the rest of this article, please consider becoming a WQ subscriber, which allows online access to the current WQ issue as well as archive content. Other access options are below.

Research, browse, and discover more than 35 years of articles, essays, and reviews by preeminent scholars and writers. Our searchable archive of back issues is free for WQ subscribers.

Subscribe today
to the WQ Online
and receive immediate access
to the WQ archive for a full year.
Subscribe Now

Steven Biel is executive director of the Humanities Center at Harvard and a senior lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University. His most recent book is American Gothic: A Life of America’s Most Famous Painting (2005).
more from this author >>

Tortured Artist

Armed for a Fight

No-Brainer?

World Leader