Grant Wood’s American Gothic: saved from obscurity by war and parody

Superstar art

American Gothic has become a symbol as redolent of the US way of life as Warhol’s Marilyn. It’s also surely one of the most parodied artworks in the world, with everything from The Simple Life to The Simpsons riffing on it.

Haunted house

The titular “gothic” isn’t anything to do with the spooky couple. It’s the typical Iowan architectural style in the backdrop. The couple, painted separately, are modelled on the artist’s sister and a local dentist.

Country boy

The poet Gertrude Stein was among those who lauded American Gothic as a critique of rural small-mindedness – an interpretation rejected by Wood, an Iowan art school teacher and avowed regionalist.

We can be heroes

Despite the debate, the work would likely have been consigned to art history’s dustbin if it hadn’t been used as a tub-thumping poster for US values in 1941.

I could be wrong, I could be right

Since then, its pop culture appropriations have only multiplied. It has been variously celebrated, occasionally as Wood intended, as a homage to a bygone way of life, but most often as a send-up of Middle America.

Part Of America After The Fall, Royal Academy, W1, 25 February to 4 June