Grant Wood's Place in Art Regionalism
Art Regionalism Display |
Grant Wood (1891-1942) became the spokesman for the Regionalist painting movement, when he famously and (somewhat outrageously) remarked that he “got all his best ideas for painting while milking a cow.” As part of playing that role, he frequently wore bib overalls in photos. Even if he did milk cows when he was a young boy, as an adult, this was not a part of his life as an artist.
In his uncompleted autobiography, he states that he always remembered his life on the farm from 1891 to 1901 and drew from those memories for his paintings. It is important to understand that he was using the farm life of the past for his inspiration and ideas. Evidence of modern life on the rural landscape, like telephone poles and tractors, rarely appear in his work.
Wood made his living as an art teacher in public schools until the late 1920s when he was persuaded to live off his artwork and his ability as a decorator. Although he had little formal art training, Wood followed the somewhat usual path for artists at that time when he traveled to France to paint and study art.
In later years, back home in Iowa with his rising fame as a Regionalist painter, Wood sometimes played the unrefined and untutored artist. The truth was he had been exposed to many contemporary methods of producing art in Europe, all lessons that he incorporated into his own art.
In France, he absorbed styles—particularly the loose brushwork and attention to light of the Impressionists—that are reflected in hundreds of his paintings of mainly rural subjects. These paintings can be found throughout Iowa, even in the study of the governor’s mansion at Terrace Hill in Des Moines.
Wood later traveled to Germany to complete a stained glass mural he was commissioned to do for the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids. In Germany, he was exposed to German and Flemish Renaissance painting, particularly the work of Hans Memling, Hans Holbein, and Albrecht Dürer, whose style influenced his later portraits, including American Gothic.
Wood ranged far and wide in finding influences, techniques, and styles to make his art. In his early work, there is evidence of the strong influence from the Arts and Crafts style and American Renaissance painting, such as in a mural he did for a Cedar Rapids real estate developer (for which he used a composition largely taken from murals done in a local bank). He simply adapted those lessons and produced work which was clearly his own.
Regionalism in art may be in any style and may be defined as painting what an artist lives with, in, or around. During the Great Depression, few artists could afford their way to Europe to study. In this sense, the Regionalist movement arose at an opportune time: helping artists realize the value of local subject matter when there was little choice for the artist to travel elsewhere. Regionalism included Wood’s theory as written in Time Magazine’s December 1934 issue:
“…regional art rests upon the idea that different sections of the U.S. should compete with one another just as Old World cities competed in the building of Gothic cathedrals. Only thus, [Wood] believes, can the U.S. develop a truly national art.”
Regionalism was not, however, exclusively about making art nor was it an invention of Wood’s. In Iowa, poet and writer Jay Sigmund suggested the idea of Regionalism to Wood. Sigmund, along with author Ruth Suckow reasoned that artists of any medium should focus on what they know rather than trying to emulate artists from New York and the East. At the University of Iowa, Professor Mabie argued for Regional theatre with a similar viewpoint on Regionalism as Wood held for Regionalist art.
Wood eventually became a principal spokesman for Regionalism in art for two reasons: first, because his painting American Gothic achieved almost instant fame and second, in the summers of 1932 and 1933, Wood ran a successful art colony at Stone City that received a great deal of attention from the national press. This too gave both Wood’s ideas and the concept of Regionalism a national audience and legitimacy in the art world.
In its 1934 Christmas issue, Time magazine ran a cover story about Regionalist artists and featured their work in the first ever color spread in that magazine. Time proclaimed that a “truly American art” was being born at last, and asserted that these Regionalist painters were creating it. It spoke of an art form free of the strange “isms” of modern European art (cubism, surrealism, etc.), and a print of American Gothic accompanied the article.
The article focused primarily on:Missourian, Thomas Hart Benton (1889 – 1975) who painted Missouri scenes among other things, but lived and worked in New York City; Iowan, Grant Wood and Kansan, John Steuart Curry (1892 – 1942), who painted pictures of life in Kansas, but lived and worked in Connecticut. Wood was the only one of these three artists who really “walked the talk,” – that is, he was the only one of the three who really lived in the place he was painting.
Eventually, Benton returned to Missouri from New York and Wood helped Curry land an artist-in-residence position in Wisconsin, thus leading all three artists to live their lives more closely to their public personas and to their subject matter.
FOUNDING AN ART COLONY
Wood’s first attempt at creating an art colony was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Wood lived and painted in a studio across the alley from a funeral home in what had been the funeral home’s carriage house and stable. Wood hoped that other barns along the alley might be remodeled into studios, resulting in an artist colony in Cedar Rapids. Unfortunately it was not financially feasible for other artists to remodel and live in the more rundown barns along the alley, and his dream of a Cedar Rapids art colony never materialized.
STONE CITY, IOWA
In 1932 Wood’s second attempt to found an art colony in Stone City, Iowa, was much more successful. It operated for six weeks the first summer and eight weeks the second, establishing Wood’s credentials to represent Regionalism.
Ten ice wagons served as dormitories, one house was remodeled as classroom and studio space, and another house was used for community space. The colony attracted painters from Iowa and elsewhere, and its “campus” excited the mostly young participating artists. Many of these artists would later work with Wood in the New Deal’s Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) after he was appointed head of Iowa’s PWAP in 1934. Because of Wood’s commitment to the PWAP, the colony did not continue.
The appointment to the PWAP in many ways became Wood’s third attempt to mold young artists into a Regionalist team. Together he and his crew of novice artists worked on murals, designed by Wood, for the Parks Library of Iowa State University.
These murals are one of the great achievements of the New Deal art patronage. Although considered artistic triumphs, the task of cooperatively producing the murals left many of the participants dissatisfied. Eager to make their own art, the students later resented Wood’s control over the project and felt they were painting Wood’s murals for him. As a result, this third effort for an artist colony did not work out as Wood had idealized.