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A major reevaluation of an iconic 20th-century American artist
This comprehensive study of Grant Wood (1891-1942) is packed with extensive new scholarship and provides fresh insight into the career of one of the key figures of 20th-century American art. Working primarily in the traditional genres of portraiture and landscape, Wood infused his paintings with a palpable tension that is grounded in the profound epistemological and social upheavals of his time. Exploring Wood´s oeuvre from a variety of perspectives, this book presents the artist´s work in all of its subtle complexity and eschews the idea that Wood can be categorized simply as a Regionalist painter.
Generously illustrated, Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables includes several works published here for the first time, as well as new photography of other paintings. The essays in the volume contextualize Wood´s work within a much larger art-historical framework than has previously been considered; renowned scholars address topics such as the artist´s literary influences, the role of gender identity in his paintings, and the parallels between Wood´s work and the contemporaneous European movements of Surrealism, Neue Sachlichkeit, Precisionism, Art Deco design, and the Arts and Crafts movement. Through a careful reconsideration of Wood´s career, creative process, technique, iconography, and critical reception, this book reveals for the first time the deep significance and cosmopolitan breadth of Wood´s artistic vision.

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