Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - American Gothic (1930)

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

Alex Schmidt is joined by podcaster Brett Rader (Yahoo Sports) and comedian Chet Wild (Fox, Hulu) for a look at why ‘American Gothic’ is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

American Gothic. Known for being a painting. Famous for its own famousness, basically. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why American Gothic is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode.

A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone, because I'm joined by two hilarious podcasters and people this week. Brett Rader is an old pal and a great fella all around. He was essential to everything we did with the Cracked podcast and with Kurt Vonnegise as a producer and contributor and a lot more. He's currently a producer of many, many things at Yahoo Sports. Brett's also the host of Hey Julie, and that is a podcast about Big Brother, as in the CBS TV show.

Also, the podcast ranges widely. It's about Big Brother and Survivor and movies and the whole rest of pop culture. It's a really special podcast. Brett is a very special person in my history with all of podcasting, and I'm so glad he's here. I'm also joined by Chet Wild. Chet is a stand-up comedian. He's a podcaster all over, in particular on the Unpopular Opinion Podcast Network run by the great Adam Todd Brown. Chet is also from Greater Buffalo, New York, and so then he is the key guest for Buffalo, New York stuff on a podcast

miniseries I made called One Way to Make an Emoji. I don't know if all of you know about that or some of you or none of you, but it is a miniseries about my experience proposing the bison emoji. And the bison is an amazing animal, I think. It's also an animal that many Americans call the buffalo. So that's why Buffalo, New York was super relevant. Chet was fantastic on that. I love talking to him in any context. And I'm so glad Brett and Chet are here to dig into this painting, get into it. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba a painting by the artist Grant Wood. Also, something I want to say going into this podcast about a piece of visual art,

the description of this episode on all players will have a direct link to an image of the painting. So you can look at it really easily. Just look at the description. There's a link there. Also, do you even need to look at it? Because American Gothic is one of the few paintings on earth that I think is just burned into everyone's mind, or at least in the United States and a lot of other countries. And isn't that interesting? Isn't that curious? Isn't that fascinating that it's, you know, in all of our minds? Spoiler, it is. So please sit back or stand in a gallery at the art institute of chicago looking at american gothic if you if you are doing that if you listen to this show and go look at the painting at the same time i have to know at alex schmitty on twitter let me know uh of course only

go there if it's safe for you because all buildings are kind of scary right now but i would be very excited to know if you feel safe to do that and you do it. That would be thrilling to me. Anyway, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Brett Rader and Chet Wilde. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Thanks for having us, by the way. Thank you for doing this, Chad and Brett. You're both great. This is just really fun. So thanks for doing it.

I'm happy to see both of your faces. Yeah. The last time we were all together in the same place, we were at a Dodgers walk-off win, I think. That's right. I think that's the last time we were all together. The Dodgers defeating the White Sox in walk-off fashion. And everyone cheering except me just being glad for you guys. I'm just very excited to be taping about this topic in general because it's so American, like baseball, you know?

And I always lead by asking the guests, what's your relationship to this topic or opinion of it? Can be nothing, can be a lot, but either of you you how do you feel about it i've seen it yeah i'm familiar with it i mean it's sure it's one of the three or three to five most iconic american paintings ever and you know that and it's like if you go to universal studios and they have like the little simpsons section they might have like a t-shirt and it's American Gothic with like Homer and Marge on it instead of like the guy and the girl and like it's it's that level of I you know embedded and it's like literally American Gothic it's Washington crossing the Delaware it's Whistler's mother it it's Nighthawks. And it's like, those are

the five most iconic American paintings ever, because we weren't really contributing much back when like the other guys were, you know, on the other side of the ocean, we're painting stuff. And that's, and that's it. That's American Gothic. It's there. I didn't even know the name of the guy who painted it. And one one clarifier when you say you've seen it do you mean you've seen it in person or you've just seen like the image around no i've seen the oh no i honestly couldn't even tell you where the i mean i know the mona lisa's in the louvre i don't know even know where the american gothic paint it could be destroyed for all i know i have no idea cool when you emailed us the photo for this episode I was like oh that's the painting based on

the end of the Green Acres intro that's I would like to point out at the time of this recording you have almost 200 ratings for this podcast on iTunes it's the only 5 star not 4.7 4.8

the only 5 star podcast I've ever been on and the ratings are about to go down because I am here with those hot takes. I'm very sorry, Alex. I thought my analysis so far has been five star worthy, but we can continue. Brett has a good five star.

I just want to point out up front that after years of hosting the crack podcast, Alex had me on and they immediately canceled that. And now you invited me to this podcast. You have learned nothing. Chet, you're up in your head. You're up in your head. Well, I mean, I can personally experience it as the former something something dot com. Once they gave me my own podcast, they immediately fired 90 percent of the staff. So this this painting, to clarify, came out before Green Acres.

So like Green Acres is a parody of this painting or am I just connecting dots that don't connect? That's like that's like a legitimate question. People don't know when this is from or when it was painted or where it is, but it is pre the television show Green Acres. It was painted in 1930. That's the thing with this photo too, is that you could have told me 1830 and I would have been like, yep, makes sense. Sure. Yeah. So this is what people looked like around the Great Depression. Yeah, that's right. 1929 and then this painting. And that year is numerical. So I think that's a good time to get into our first segment, because on every episode,

our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. We're going to cover that in a segment called 1, 2, 3, and to the 4. Schmidt, Doggy, Dog, and Brad and Cheddar at the door. Ready for statistics. So back your facts up, because you know we pulled some numbers up. Wow, it's incredible that the listener who sent that in knew that Brett and Chet would be on the episode. So I did a little edit. I'm a straight white guy, and that's the whitest thing I've ever witnessed.

In my 35, 36 years on this planet, that is the whitest moment of my life right there, Alex. And this name was submitted by at Tyrannical Jack on Twitter. Submit your name for the numbers and statistics segment to at SIFpod on Twitter or to SIFpod at gmail.com. And if you could work Brett and Chet into many of the lyrics going forward, I feel it would probably not make sense. But I mean, I personally would enjoy when I listen to this podcast hearing how I'm, you know, worked into this as well. Yeah. As tyrannical dinosaur or whatever the hell the person's name was did so effortlessly.

Tyrannical Jack. Tyrannical Jack. Yeah. Oh, Jack. I don't know where I got dinosaur. Why did we both think it was a dinosaur? Speaking of dinosaurs, did you see these two old people in this painting? Oh, perfect.

Because the first number was going to be 90 because that's how many years ago American Gothic was painted. It was first exhibited October 30th of 1930 at the Art Institute of Chicago, and it was painted that same year. The last time Adam Todd Brown and I toured the Midwest, we were in Chicago, which we didn't see this there, but I'm pretty sure we drove by these people on some roadside stand in Wisconsin or Iowa or Kansas or something. Like I've seen these

people in real life. When you said you were in Chicago, I thought you were going to say you went and saw it because it is still at the Art Institute of Chicago. And so then me growing up in Glen Illinois, I saw it like a billion times as a kid. They also have Nighthawks there by Edward Hopper. Those are kind of the two super famous paintings that they've got. I mean, it's possible. Just somebody introduced us to Malort in Chicago, and I don't remember anything after that. So I could have blacked out and gone and see this painting. But Malort, it wasn't even the alcohol.

It was the taste that caused me to black out for four days. Now, I have a question about art museums in Chicago. My only reference point is when that cool guy that I know, Ferris Bueller, went to an art museum. Oh, yeah. Is that the same art museum? It is, same museum. Or is that a different one?

Yeah. Man, they could have had that shot. They could have had him. They could have had Matthew Broderick and Mia Sara standing there with the thing, you know? Yeah. Doing the whole pitch the thing, you know? Yeah. Doing the whole pitch before they, you know, John Hughes, horrible director. Terrible.

Too much Chagall windows. That's what we say. That was a free idea for you, Hughes. And you wasted it. I hope somebody points out that if you go like on the director's cut of the movie, they actually did film it and it just didn't make it. Maybe they couldn't clear the rights, who knows? Yeah, it's such a painting that we've all seen so many times. I wouldn't be surprised if it is in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and I just scan over it, kind of memory wiped it, because it's less noticeable then.

There's a really cool Seurat painting there in front of. There's really cool Marc Chagall windows there in like, like those are the cool moments from that montage. I know none of the words that you just said. It's all good. The next number here is $300. And $300 is the prize that the painting American Gothic won from the Art Institute of Chicago. It was brought to the museum, partly to enter a contest. And according to Slate, quote, the judges dismissed it as a trifling comic valentine, their words, but a powerful museum patron convinced the contest judges to give it any award at all, and then also acquire it for the museum.

It does feel like a card. I mean, I'm sure we have all seen it on like Hallmark cards or cards at the front of the supermarket. But I mean, that is funny that when I guess it was produced and submitted, they were like, this is like a stupid card. And now it's everywhere. And whoever made that judgment is dead and wrong. How much is $300 in 1930? Ah, I'm ahead of you on that one. I did my own research for the math. And by that, I mean, I just Googled.

Did you Google it? Please let us know, yeah. From 1930 to 2020, that's an inflation rate of 1,456.4%. $300 today, or $300 then, is $4,669.19. Like, five grand. That's not bad. I have no idea how much paintings cost. Like, I don't know.

If you're a painter, I don't know. That's the thing. It's like, it's actual money, and it's no money if you're acquiring American Gothic. You know what I mean? Like if you're getting one of the most famous paintings in the entire world, it's nothing. Like it's a steal. Yeah. Is it now a priceless piece of art? Is it like worth, I would imagine millions of dollars or, you know, it would be appraised that, I don't know, some number that I can't conceive of. It's also, wouldn't it be a funny painting

to buy because everyone would just think you got a print of it? It's so common. Like no one would be like, you have American Gothic, wow. They'd be like, oh, you got that like goofy painting from the internet. Yeah, you could get like at Spencer's Gifts, you could get a poster of American Gothic and a poster of American Gothic,

but it's Tony and Carmela Soprano for like 20 bucks total yeah could i get inverted american gothic poster that would look really cool with a black light is that an answer oh if i owned american gothic this would be in my closet i would be creeped the f**k out to look where would you hang this right yeah nothing chiller than two stern old Iowans looking at you. That's a fun vibe for your place. Yeah. There's also one other thing about the money it won. And this is according to Art Institute of Chicago Curator of American Art, Sarah Kelly Oler, in an interview 2019. She said, quote, it won an award called the Norman Waite Harris Bronze Award. And it was said to be the third place award,

but if you rank the cash awards, it was more like fifth place, end quote. So this is a painting that finished fifth in a contest and then proceeded to become probably the most famous painting in America. And no one knows what won. Oh, yeah, we don't have any photos of like two cows on a field or something like that. I would go by any of the ones that ranked higher.

And then when I guess over, I'd be like, hey, you know that painting, American Gothic? And they'd be like, oh, the thing from Green Acres? And I'd be like, yeah. You know how famous that painting is? Well, **** that painting. I own a painting that's better than that. Yeah, technically. Technically, it is better. One more set of numbers here. These are the years 1891 to 1942. That's the lifespan of

artist Grant DeVolson Wood, who painted the painting. Born 1891 outside of Anamosa, Iowa, in Eastern Iowa, and then died 1942. So he lived to 51 and he how old was he when he painted this? Yeah, he died. He actually died the day before his 51st birthday. And so he was around age 39 when he painted American Gothic.

So that really launched his career and then he didn't have a ton of years after that. But that's just sort of the fact. I got no jokes on that. Not expecting any makes sense but and from here we have a couple big takeaways for the episode let's get into the first one takeaway number one american gothic is based on a real house that tourists visit even though until very recently, people still lived there. That's the deal.

The house and the, it's a famous painting of two people in front of a house, and the house is real and inspired the whole thing. But what happened to the people that lived there? Did they, they died and then no one else wanted to live there? I know that seems irrelevant, but that's where my brain went. Sure, sure. So I, one thing about me, surprise, I have been there. It's in the town of Eldon, Iowa. I'm not surprised.

That's the least surprising fact about you, Alex. I guess that's true, yeah. Is there a recreated painting photo? Please don't tell me this is a cheesy thing where you go there and you put your head and like a like a head cut out of the painting and it's like your face holding a pitchfork exactly so it's not that but what happened what the situation is there's the house it's still there and then there is a museum run by the state of iowa next to it and it's kind of by itself on the road other than this museum and the house itself and then the museum will rent you costumes

and props. So then you take those, put them on, and then you stand in front of the house and do your thing. Yeah, that's that's even worse. I don't I don't want to wear some overalls that someone else was wearing. How close is this to Dyersville, Iowa, where the Field of Dreams site is? I've been there. I can I can connect on that level. I have to check. I think Dyersville is north, but it's the general eastern half of the state, right? This is like, it's southeast Iowa. It's kind of between Fairfield and Ottumwa. I know that's very specific, but that's where it is. And it's a town population 927. It's just this little town. Also, if you pull up the Wikipedia page for Eldon, Iowa, you know how most Wikipedia pages for a town have a picture of the town? The picture page for Eldon, Iowa, you know how most Wikipedia pages for a town

have a picture of the town? The picture on the Eldon entry is just American Gothic. There's no pictures of the town itself. This is all we got. Yeah. The thing with the house's current situation is it was built in 1881 by Catherine and Charles Dibble. And it's officially listed on the National Register

of Historic Places as the Dibble House. They's officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Dibble House. They don't call it like the American Gothic House or whatever. Are these folks the Dibbles or are they somebody else? Somebody else. Yeah. Okay. We'll get there, I imagine.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Let's look this up on Zillow. Let's see what it's currently renting for. Well, and so also it was privately owned all the way until 1991. So more than 60 years after the painting was premiered, it was still like just somebody's house. And then owner Carl E. Smith donated it to the state of Iowa. And then from 91 until 2014, the Iowa State Historical Society kept renting it out to people, because they didn't want to send caretakers there so they said

like if you want to be a caretaker you can also rent it and live here and so only since 2014 has it actually been like used as a museum and before that it was just this museum next door renting stuff to people who stood out in front of like somebody's house doing doing bits wow someone was just living there and like, you know, someone was just living there for a while and it's like, oh, how'd you get that place? I don't know. My lease was up my old place.

This was just like available. And now the governor of Iowa is my landlord. Yeah, yeah. I work at the Field of Dreams up the road and it's actually, it's just a quick commute for me. Having met the guy that puts on the uniform that is like a tour guide at field of dreams it would not surprise me if he lived there

it would be the most on-brand thing for him hold on at field of dreams you also get to put on a uniform there's a guy there that puts on the like white socks. Oh, wow. And it's all wool. And it's like 100 degrees and he's just sweating. Yeah. Oh, I thought for a second it seemed like they offered the same sort of thing where it's like all Iowa roadside attractions. You get to pay some money. You get to wear a period specific clothing and take a few photos. You can take photos with the guy.

civic clothing and take take a few photos but you can take photos with the guy and they do have i would call it less of a museum and more of a gift shop uh where you could just buy a copy of the movie which if if you're going to that site i feel like you already own or are familiar with the movie yeah i'm sorry to ruin your episode about this painting of these two old people is field of dreams like was the field of Dreams a thing before the damn movie in, like, 1991? Or was, like, this just a very popular movie and they were like, let's just build this tourist attraction that Kevin Costner can reap all the money from? Here's a number. One, the number of baseball fields they built in dyersville iowa to shoot this movie so yeah none of this existed beforehand but then it's just like a small town

and they're like oh we have a claim to fame and kevin costner comes back like king yeah king whatever i don't know king of something uh and loves coming back there uh there was supposed to be so they revamped turning this into a completely different podcast they revamped the stadium this year and i think it was the yankees and the white socks that were supposed to play there this year yeah that's right uh and then it got canceled because of covid though i would think playing baseball in a cornfield in dyersville iowa would be about the safest place in America to play baseball right now. I think also it was like a multi-step cancellation because they switched it to White Sox Cardinals to stay in the region. And then all the Cardinals had COVID.

So then they couldn't do it. Oh, yeah. So it's been a crazy year. Because otherwise, you're right. It's fine. Yeah. All the Field of Dreams stuff is relevant because Iowa has a really strong roadside attraction culture.

Like there's the town of Riverside, Iowa, that is canonically the birthplace of Captain Kirk. So there's a bunch of Star Trek stuff. Like there's an Enterprise and there's a bunch of other things, you know, they're way into this kind of thing. Yeah. Feels like so far, two of them are completely made up. It's somewhat true.

A spaceship captain in the future was born here. Like, I know the house, it's relatively near where I grew up, the house where Rick James died, but there's no roadside attraction for that. But if it was in Iowa, there would probably be a whole museum about Rick James dying. I sincerely think that's true. Yeah think i think it would have a thing yeah i know you moved to the east coast alex but i don't know if you were aware but los angeles where chet and i live is the actually the city from the movie la la land what it wasn't filmed in la la no it was no it's it's a whole we actually live in a giant uh roadside attraction for the film Lala. I live here and I didn't even know that.

Wow, I'm feeling so excited. No, it's an interesting fact. So the artist Grant Wood, who I think is not well known outside of this painting, but he was born and raised in Iowa, spent a lot of time in Iowa. And there were other people besides Wood trying to like build up fine arts in Iowa. And so this is according to the book Grant Woods, Iowa by Wendy Elliott and William Balthazar Rose. He was invited to the town of Eldon to lead a painting demonstration. And then a curator of an art gallery in Cedar Rapids named Edward Rowan was like driving Wood around Eldon just to see stuff. And then from a car window, he sees the window of this house and he has them stop. He says, quote, I imagined American Gothic people with their faces stretched out long to go with this American Gothic house. And Wood said he proceeded to paint, quote, the kind of people I fancied should live in

that house. So the window of this real house inspired the entire painting. That was it. We don't fancy enough in 2020. Need to bring that back. And so these people are imagined? They're not an actual, he's just like, oh, I want to make people who's got these long and sullen faces like the window of this house? Or did he actually find a couple? That's a great question. It's a thing where Wood sees a house and says,

these are characters in my head. This is what I think it would be. And then he picked out real people to be models for the characters he thought of. So he used real people as the models, which we'll talk about in the next takeaway. But it was all springing from this character of who would live in this house that's, when you go, it's a pretty small house. Like it's not that nice. It's not that fancy, but it has a Gothic window, like a cathedral style window. And he found that interesting. Like he was like, what's the character of the person who builds that? It's so interesting that to the artist, the key, like the focal point of the piece is the window, yet for the American public, it's, look at these two boring old white people how sad they are let's put them on let's stop them on a t-shirt or a bumper sticker or something like that and and honestly

i've seen i've seen this photo this image a hundred times i've never thought about the window wow yeah until right now that's interesting i just realized the the gentleman in the photo is wearing overalls, but then a suit coat over it. I don't think I've ever seen that in real life. It's also a painting where that's like a little bit more old fashioned than 1930 was like Woods aiming for an even older era than the Great Depression a little bit. And so to us, it's very confusing historically where they are. Well, small town Iowa is always like 50 years behind, right? Shout out small town Iowa. That's how people kind of read it. Yeah, yeah. One more thing with the window, that kind of window was pretty common, especially in the 1800s. According to Slate, quote, it's what's called the carpenter Gothichic style which applied the lofty architecture of european

cathedrals to flimsy american frame houses and so it was a thing that like there were there are other houses like this that existed in the world a lot of them have been torn down because they weren't like that fancy or that nice but uh this window is not like totally unique it's just this happenstance that the artist sees it in the right place right time and has an idea it's really pretty uh brilliant architecture and cost saving to be like we're gonna make this house out of the cheapest materials but if we just invest in like one cool window up top that'll be the selling point and make it seem way fancier than it is that's exactly what they're going for yeah that's right but then we can i think we can go from there into the people yes they're they're fascinated too. Yeah, that's right. But then we can, I think we can go from there into the people. Yes. Because they're fascinated too.

I've been asking to get to this point. Takeaway number two. The two people in the painting are based on very different real people in artist Grant Wood's life. These are both people he knew, people he picked out to be the characters in it. And they both have very divergent, very different lives and roles in Wood's life. She was a freak. He was like, hey, hey Sally, I need you to put this on and look like a sad old housewife

and a vague sign and she's like, well I'm such a free spirit, I don't believe I could do that. But she did it, and that's how she is. I'm right, right? So extremely not. The lady in the painting. Okay, he's the freak. I got you.

The lady in the painting was Grant Wood's sister. Her name is Nan Wood Graham, because she married a guy named Graham. Oh, so it turns out grant wood is the freak there you go and then the man in the painting is grant wood's dentist like his dentist there at iowa a man named dr freak confirmed yeah this is a plot line i saw on porn hub once uh and his name was dr dentist and the stepsister get together his name was dr byron henry mckeeby and he was more than 30 years older there's also uh just a fact about the painting where wood intended for this to be a painting of a farmer and his spinster

daughter but a lot of people think they're a couple and so he just like spent a lot and his spinster daughter, but a lot of people think they're a couple. And so he just spent a lot of his life telling people, no, it's a farmer and a daughter. They're not married. They're not together. At first, I want to make a joke about that, but I guess people had kids a lot younger back then. So it's conceivable they're only like, he's what, 75 in this photo? And she, I don't know. How do you think this guy looks? The real people were 32 years apart in age. So he thought it would read clearly as farmer daughter, but it super doesn't for us.

I mean, he's also pretty upset that we're like, hey, that photo of the man and the woman. He's like, no, it's a photo of a window. There just happened to be a father and a daughter standing in front of it, but it's about the window. It's about the vertical lines, don't you see? I mean, if this guy can afford both overalls and a suit coat, I assume he can date 30 years younger than his old age. This dude's flush. He's the Bruce Wayne of Iowa. He's like a sugar daddy of his times.

This dude's flush. He's the Bruce Wayne of Iowa. He's like a sugar daddy of his times. And then there's each real person has a really interesting story, I think. So we'll talk about those stories. I think starting with Dr. Byron Henry McKeeby, the dentist who becomes the man, the farmer in the painting. There's a great article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. It's called Who is the Farmer in Grant Woods American Gothic? A Cedar Rapids Dentist.

It's by Joe Coffey. And he says, quote, Dr. Byron Henry McKeebee did not want to be famous. He shied away from artist Grant Wood's initial offer to be the male model for American Gothic. Wood said he'd exaggerate McKeebee's features so no one would recognize him. The two were friends, so McKeebee relented, end quote. And I sent you guys a picture of it's the painting and then the two people uh who you may not know were the models for it it's mckibby and then nan wood together how similar would you say the person that like mckibby and the guy in the painting are i would say extremely they look like exactly the same yeah okay. Okay. Yeah. He did a, he did a job covering for the dude for sure. Yeah.

I mean, the, the photo is clearly a few years after the painting. He just looks a little bit, they both look a little bit older. And she actually, I'm sorry. She actually does look a little bit younger IRL than in the photo. It seems like he made her appear a little bit older, a little bit, you know, a little bit frumpier. But she's got a whole like 1940s like, hey, Lieutenant, come over here, hairdo. So. Yeah, we'll have it linked for people. Basically, he told both his sister and his dentist that he would use them as a model, but change their

features a lot so people wouldn't recognize him. And he very much changed his sister and his dentist that he would use them as a model but change their features a lot so people wouldn't recognize him and he very much changed his sister's features and screwed over his dentist completely he looks exactly like he does in the painting yeah yeah that is uh not a good cover job do you just think he just got like a bad just like a really rough root canal like either before and it was just like you know what man screw you like you're on this photo you're in this painting forever which i will sell for 300 and get fourth place at the whatever fair thing or the reverse he does it he paints it and he's like huh isn't it so different like i got you got you, bro. I protected your identity. And then the dentist, the next time the checkup comes, it's like Steve Martin, Little Shop of Horrors sort of treatment.

Right. Then the revenge. Or this was like the second version of the painting. And the first one, instead of holding a pitchfork, the guy was holding a giant toothbrush. And he's like, this looks way too much like me. He's like, all right, all right, I'll redo it. And they just put in the pitchfork. Yeah, it is a thing where the dentist immediately had a very upset reaction to how much it looked like him and how famous the painting got. Because apparently, according to this Gazette article, McKeeby lied about being the model in it all the way until 1935.

So for five years, people would meet him and say, hey, you're the guy from the immediately famous painting, right? And he'd just lie and say, no, he wasn't. And then the article says that when he admitted it, quote, it was literally national news, end quote, that we'd found the guy from the painting. Simpler times. Yeah.

We found him. I mean, he's very much clear. He's just clearly the guy. Yeah, there's no getting around that at all. Even if you're in like a dentist's coat or whatever, it's clearly this guy. It's a very distinctive face. He also said in a 1943 interview, so many years later, quote, it made the friendship a little bumpy, but nobody could

really be mad at Grant Wood, end quote. So it seems like Byron kind of got over it a little bit later. He was like, well, fair's fair. I'm in this famous painting. Four people were way more polite in 1940. Oh, sure. And that's the equivalent today of like telling somebody to like go F themselves and jump off a bridge, you know? Right, right. Yeah, that's how you know you're really communicating with someone on Twitter. Well, and so that's his story. And then the model for the daughter is again, Grant Wood's sister, Nan Wood. And also apparently Wood had an actual spinster in mind for the daughter. He was like, oh, it would be

perfect. This late unmarried lady I know in Cedar Rapids, I'll paint her. But Wood figured he could never get her to agree to do it. So he brought in his sister and then modified like toward this other person he had in his mind. So that's why it looks so different. It's a really different lady. Sounds like Wood had a crush on this lady. Like, ah, she'd never do it. I can't even get the nerve to ask. Yeah, the sister in real life, if you're not looking at the photo,

she's got a much more like, not a white, I don't want to say she has a wide face, but the woman in the painting has such a slim, narrow face. Exactly. You know, the woman with a pretty normal round shaped face looks, you know, wider in comparison. That's exactly right. Yeah. And she, in real life, Nan Wood is dressed very stylishly in that picture. It is like, it looks like the actual farmer from the painting brought like a cool lady to go see it. It looks totally different. Yeah. She looks like the actual farmer from the painting brought like a cool lady to go see it. It looks totally different. Yeah, she looks like she's about to kiss a sailor in Times Square. Yeah, yeah.

Which, history on that photo, not that great. Oh, I don't know. Save it for the picture. Oh, long story short, she was kissed against her will. Oh, well, now I don't want us to go to war anymore, Chet. How could you tell me that? I'm furious now. I'm just telling.

I'm just saying like it is. No, that's good to know. Through the lens of 2020, that guy would have been canceled long ago. Well, and also, and so then Wood kind of picked his sister because that was the person he was closest to in his family. He had kind of a tough childhood where, according to the New Yorker, Wood's, quote, forbiddingly taciturn Quaker father died when Wood was 10. Wood described him as more a god than a father to me. And so then Wood's mother and three siblings all moved to Cedar Rapids.

And then Wood became extra close in particular to this sister. And then late in life, she became like the custodian of his notes and sketches and like did a lot of stuff to preserve his work and memory and was like the key caretaker of his legacy. The dentist passed away in 1950, but she was born 1899 and lived all the way until 1990. So also she was around in like a lot of people's lifetime, if that's just interesting to you, the lady in American Gothic. Yeah. Who's alive when you are.

She lived to be over 90 too. That's pretty good. Yeah, yeah. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that, we're going to take a little break. We'll be right back. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess.

This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more

is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Remember, no running in the halls. I found a dedicated Pinterest that has 500 plus American best Gothic images. And they're just all parodies of like a McDonald's one where like a Big Mac's on the pitchfork and gas masks. That actually that takes us really well into the final takeaway.

Takeaway number three. Grant Wood spent the rest of his career fighting the idea that American Gothic is a joke. And that's sort of my opinion, but that's also coming from a lot of facts about the artist's life and other work and interviews that he, everyone thought he was kidding. And he insisted that he was not. It was supposed to be like a not joke of a painting. It's obviously a painting of a window. Yes, in a lot of ways, yeah. To explore that, it kind of makes sense to look at, hey, why is this painting famous, right?

Because it is a little random, you would think, that it's so famous. But it goes up in this contest and it is like platformed by a major museum, the Art Institute of Chicago. But according to the curator Sarah Kelly Oler, one reason it's famous is that its fame and meaning cannot be separated from its moment in time because the Great Depression had just started. And she says, quote, there was a real sense of desperation around the country and a sense of wanting to return to authentic American values. Wood tapped into that in this painting of two people in Iowa standing in front of an old house. And then she says that what happens next is that once the news of the painting is published, there are two colliding forces. And she basically describes it

as Iowans who are mad and say, we're not these weird old-timey people we have like radio and tractors and machines and we're like normal like the rest of you and that's just what they said last week uh and then the other force is what she calls quote condescending east coast intelligentsia ah the liberals yeah because so iowan people saw saw this Iowa painting and were mad it made them look old fashioned. And then coastal people saw the painting and said, yeah, rural people are idiots. And so that argument kind of sparked the fame of the painting. It was sort of why it was famous because people were fighting over it. Yeah, I mean, it's almost a little bit like a blue dress.

Oh, blue dress, yellow dress situation situation but about the soul of the nation yeah well and also the one other reason it got famous according to the cedar rapids gazette is that uh 1930 was right around the time when newspapers started being able to print like pretty good images because we think of old-y newspapers as having like really grainy, bad looking images. But this says it was still mostly black and white, but you could do shading and stuff where you could like show the details of a painting. And so this was just one of the first paintings to be like in a newspaper legibly. And that helped to make it famous too. That makes a lot more sense of why this would be famous. Just the timing of it. Yeah, it's a timing thing.

Like if this painting came out 10 years earlier or years later probably not the same outcome i mean do paintings after 1930 become famous anymore like it's like i'm gonna go see a talkie get out of here with your painting old iowan dude like pollock stuff like who are the contemporary yeah i mean you have pollock stuff you have oh you have uh guy painted this lichtenstein this yeah lichtenstein you have the guy painting the damn soup can and stuff like it's it's not even art yeah it only becomes popular i guess like in art art spaces rather than like, this is a painting that some guy in our town painted for this Chicago contest. Let's put it in here. And then it spreads. It becomes viral. Yeah. Yeah. I don't see static imagery making a dent in today's society. Like there's no painting

that could break through the noise. People be be like, why isn't this gif moving? With the painting here, there's like a couple reasons people do think it's a sincere artistic attempt. And then other reasons people think it's like just a gag. And looking at the sincere reasons first, it's just that in every interview, Grant Wood told people he meant it. He also told people he specifically did only one other painting ever as a satire. It's one called Daughters of Revolution in 1932. Like he was he was very adamant all the time about, I was not kidding. Like I wanted to depict these people. I wanted it to mean something. It's not like supposed to be just a goofy meme. He said, quote, there is satire in it, but only

as there is satire in any realistic statement. These are types of people I have known all my life. I tried to characterize them truthfully to make them more like themselves than they were in actual life. So he meant it. He wasn't like kidding around, you know. No, I'm looking at the photo of the daughters of the revolution and comparing them side by side. You're like, oh, yeah, I think he actually is making fun of these old

ladies because they kind of have like funny looks on their face and they're not they're they're almost it's interesting they're almost drawn slightly out of focus or maybe i don't know if that was just the scan of it um that i'm that i'm looking at and then if you compare them side by side american gothic seems like a more of a serious painting, whereas the other one kind of has this like brownish tone to it. And it's just like these kind of silly old ladies, like looking at you, like,

yeah, I don't know. They just have, they have old, like, like incredulous old lady looks on their faces. But when you only have one photo, one painting rather,

that's famous, people don't really know your style. So they look at that and they're like, Oh, one painting rather that's famous people don't really know your style so they look at that and they're like oh that's that's funny that's funny but he's like no no that's not even my funny stuff like this is my this is my serious this is my blue this is my blue period gotta you gotta check out the other stuff for like my wacky my wacky hits there's a another reason american gothic is it seems sincere is because Grant Wood tried to build an entire artistic movement celebrating rural Midwestern stuff. It was called the Regionalist Movement. And he kind of single-handedly tried to get it going.

He described himself as a farmer painter when people asked him what his job is. He once said in an interview, quote, all the really good ideas I've ever had came to me while I was milking a cow. You don't get panicky about some ism or other while you have bossy by the business end, end quote. And then that's not relatable. I don't know what is. But then he, this movement, it was mainly him and two other artists. And they did a photo shoot of themselves in overalls. I sent you guys a was mainly him and two other artists. And they did a photo shoot of themselves in overalls. I sent you guys a picture of him and one of the artists based on the subject matter and what they were going for in their overall branding. It was a bunch of artists trying to

say like, you know, Midwestern life is valid and we are farm people. And so depicting that can be fine art. When I first saw that, I thought it was a cast photo from Hee Haw. I'm like, oh, there's a young Roy. One more reason people think the painting is serious is that Wood did a lot of art and was very substantially trained and skilled. And according to The New Yorker, Wood was, quote, precocious in a wide range of crafts, silversmithing, ceramics, interior decoration, painting, and in one prodigious instance, stained glass design. Wood made a lot of trips to Paris in the 20s.

He trained a lot in Europe. He was somebody who was a very, very skilled fine artist and not somebody just doing gag greeting cards. And so that's another reason people say he must have meant something by this. I believe him. Yeah. It just also kind of looks like a like a gag greeting card yeah sure at a certain point like the art i mean i mean obviously wood is dead but like at a certain point the artist is dead and like at a certain point the what people perceive of the thing is the real thing even if the intention is different.

That's right. I've got three reasons here why people think it was a joke and it's a gag. And one is that everyone at the time said it was satirical, like the museum thought it was satirical and critics and commentators thought it was satirical. And then a second reason is like everyone's parodied it. Everyone's made a joke out of it. And I think you're right, Brett, that like once it's in other people's hands, even if Wood didn't mean it to beved of and it didn't go very well. Otherwise, he lived with his mother until her death and probably had a long relationship with his male personal secretary, Park Renard. The scholarship varies, but a lot of people think he was either homosexual or asexual. was either homosexual or asexual. And so with that, a lot of critics have just decided that if someone had a sexual orientation that was rejected by quote-unquote traditional America, then they're not going to be doing a painting that's wholly endorsing traditional America.

It's going to be some kind of jab or satire of it. Oh, interesting. Or if when he painted, he didn't fully know, it was him overcompensating. Yeah, honestly could be. Yeah. It's like all the stuff about his sexuality and who he was with is pretty fuzzy other than he was probably gay. Yeah.

He's like, I'm not gay. I painted a guy that's wearing a long sleeve shirt and then overalls over top of that. And then a suit coat over top of that. No way I'm attracted to the male body. Right. That logic tracks, right? over top of that. No way I'm attracted to the male body. Right. That logic tracks, right? And part of people thinking he was that Grant Wood was gay is art like Sultry Night they did in 1937. It's technically a lithograph, but it's it's like a piece of art celebrating a nude man

pouring water over himself. OK. And he did a lot of like kind of homoerotic art like that. Pause your podcast. Pause the pod. Look up Sultry Knight. Okay. Now that you've brought up Sultry Knight, tell me that isn't the original Ice Bucket Challenge. It does look like that. I mean. But nude.

I mean, but it's interesting the way that we do this with works like, you know, recently. The last 20 years we've done this with The Matrix, obviously. You have the Wachowskis. They both come out as trans, and it very much fits the text that it's like, oh, this is a trans text. This is not about computers and punching each other. I mean, it is. But I mean, I don't know. It's hard to read that much into it with this stuff because it doesn't really seem, I don't know, overly sexual.

Even the photo of the naked guy doesn't seem very sexual to me. Yeah, it is. You're right. It's like there might be some people who heard this, knew going in that Grant Wood was probably gay and are shocked. I waited until now to bring it in because it's a thing that a lot of people view his entire output, including American Gothic, through. It's such a substantial thing. And it was hard for him to be gay in the 30s, 40s. Not that it's easy now.

I'm sure it was. And maybe I'm wrong. Cancel me or whatever. But every work done by a hetero artist isn't like, well, it's about heterosexual sex. It's about this man being attracted to women. But like, why does, you know, even in the 1930s, when obviously being gay was very different, very shunned by society, like that doesn't necessarily mean his art is about being gay. He can just be an artist who wants to paint. Right on, yeah. You know, a window, a window in this house.

Look at this window. It's beautiful. It's gothic. I mean, it's three white males on a podcast. I feel like we're all very qualified to have hot takes. Yeah, no, I don't know. No, you're both right. Tell me I'm wrong.

I don't know. When it is a, it's a painting that has been a blank canvas for lots of less represented groups to say something to. This Art Institute curator, Sarah Kelly Oler says, quote, my theory is that their stoic expression, their faces really are blank, opens the door to this painting being parodied. And then also probably like the best like takeoff on American Gothic is another piece of fine art. It's by a black artist named Gordon Parks, who made a 1942 photograph that he titled American Gothic. And it's a depiction of a lady named Ella Watson, who was a black custodian of federal buildings in Washington, DC, who he just met. And it's her by herself holding up a mop and a broom, both kind of like the pitchfork in the wood painting,

in front of an American flag. And it's sort of a statement about life for black people in America. And so you have these gags where people stamp the president's face on the farmer, but you also have real art coming out of it, too. Yeah, that's a really awesome photograph that sort of evokes that in a, but kind of almost twists the meaning a little bit or continues the meaning of just like, this is, these are regular working folk. Yeah. But it sort of updates it that the period a little bit.

I know it's hard to close on a really meaningful piece of art, because then what do you joke about it? What do you do? But I think that's the last thing about American Gothic, yeah. It turns out the meaningful piece of art was this podcast. Hey. Oh. Ah.

Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Brett Rader and Chet Wilde for leaping into this topic that is so just near and dear to my heart. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is Daughters of Revolution. That is a 1932 painting by this same artist, Grant Wood, and it is the key to so many things about American Gothic and so much more. Also, much like this episode's description linked to an image of American Gothic, the bonus show will link you directly to an image of Daughters of Revolution, because you gotta see it. It's phenomenal. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show,

for more than a dozen other bonus shows that I know you'll enjoy, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring American Gothic with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, American Gothic is based on a real house that tourists visit, even though people lived there until very recently. Takeaway number two, the two people in the painting are based on very different people in Grant Wood's life. And takeaway number three, Grant Wood spent the rest of his career

fighting the idea that American Gothic is a joke. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. Brett Rader is at Brett Rader on Twitter. That's R-A-D-E-R, Brett Rader. He's also the host of the Hey Julie podcast. And listen for Brett producing great stuff at Yahoo Sports. Week in, week out.

Really good. Chet Wilde is all over the Unpopular Opinion Podcast Network, in particular, making a great show called The 90s Sucked with Adam Todd Brown. There's a link for that. If I may self-plug within his plug, he's a wonderful guest on episode four out of four of my podcast miniseries that is entitled One Way to Make an Emoji. I'm so proud of that show. It's very, very special to me. And Chet's excellent on it. And then Chet is on Twitter as well. He's at Chet Wild, C-H-E-T-W-I-L-D. That Twitter account birthed one of my favorite internet things, which is called Fastball at Chet's. When you Google it,

you will love it. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. An interview with Art Institute of Chicago Curator of American Art, Sarah Kelly Oler. She has amazing insights into the painting, and it was conducted in 2019 and published to the museum's website. A newspaper article from The Gazette, which is the newspaper of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The article's called Who Was the Farmer in Grant Wood's American Gothic? A Cedar Rapidsids dentist. And that Gazette article is by Joe Coffey. A great book entitled Grant Wood's Iowa by Wendy Elliott and William Balthazar Rose. Find those and more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Their newest album is called Long in the Tooth.

Get it at daptonerecords.com. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. See more of Burt's art on Instagram at Burt Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating.

So how about that? Talk to you then.