Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings Book

This appears to be a book that was developed from a class Biel taught under classmen at Harvard. Short, and heavily footnoted - more for source citation than added content (163 for a 172 pp book). The footnoting was a little odd - often just adding a footnote at the end of a paragraph and accumulating all those sources in one note.

Speaking of accumulation, this book feels like an accumulation of just about all the facts he could lay his hands on about Grant Wood's painting, "American Gothic". He was greatly aided by what appears to be a huge collection gathered over the years by Wood's sister, Nan (the woman in the painting).

I enjoyed the parts giving us the history of Iowa's own little Bohemian community, or Nan's fight to maintain copyright control. And also his explanation of the how the painting has been viewed differently as both Art and Politics through the decades. I would have appreciated more of Wood's own words on the painting (his explanation of what he meant to the painting to say seems to have changed quite often through his short life - painted in 1930, he died in 1942). And Biel's chapter on the many parodies of the painting was often of interest as well.

But in the end, I was a bit disappointed. It did feel at times to be a collection of facts and opinions about the painting, but nothing really holding it all together. Maybe this has to do w/ Biel's own attitude of refusing to state what he believes the painting IS *about*.

I saw the original just his past Christmas (2012) in the Art Institute of Chicago, for the first time in decades. I had already bought this book at that time, but had not read it. But knowing I would be reading this, I paid closer attention to the painting than I might have otherwise. What struck me the most, and what you don't see in the smaller reproductions we are used to seeing, is the amount of detail Wood has put into the painting - particularly the clothes.