The Couple with the Pitchfork

A rich, evolving history of one of the most recognized couples in the world

In this abundantly illustrated book, award-winning art historian Wanda Corn tracks the fortunes and vicissitudes of Grant Wood’s American Gothic, his realist painting of a rural man and woman posed stiffly before a modest white house with a gothic-styled window, made in 1930. She explores Wood’s scrappy formation as a disadvantaged midwestern artist and his unexpected, overnight fame when American Gothic premiered at the Art Institute of Chicago and was purchased for the museum’s collection. After a close look at the painting’s volatile reputation over its first thirty years, Corn turns to that historic moment in the 1960s when the couple with their pitchfork left the museum and journeyed into the streets. Shedding their preciousness as art, they became a versatile, free-floating image open to reuse and reinterpretation. That moment also found Corn beginning her long career in art history, and she interweaves her story with that of the couple’s evolving appearances in pop art, cartoons, advertisements, and grassroots reenactments. She offers compelling explanations for the painting’s entry into the pantheon of cult visual images. Today, Wood’s couple stands alongside other art icons: Whistler’s mother, Rodin’s thinker, Hokusai’s wave, Munch’s screamer, and the enigmatic beauty in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.

A highly readable and personalized study of a painter and the work he would forever be tied to, The Couple with the Pitchfork: American Gothic from Easel to Icon sheds critical light on the cultural forces that transformed an image with humble roots into a global icon whose reach and charisma extends far beyond the world of art.