A Brief Return to my Art Inquiry

For those of you who might have been nonplussed by my entry a few weeks ago about the difficulty of judging and appreciating art, I came across a little piece of art criticism recently that I think you might enjoy.

Thomas Hoving wrote the piece for the Los Angeles Times about the classic Grant Wood painting "American Gothic." (The image I've inserted here is a spoof of the painting for acoustic music lovers, courtesy of Mandolin Cafe.)

I love the fact that the man in the overhauls and jacket is the painter's dentist, and the woman is his sister.

I won't include the whole piece here, which probably wouldn't be legal, but I'll give you a taste of Hoving's clear summation of the significance of this iconic American painting:

"American Gothic" is an exquisitely painted portrait of the
highest quality that ranks with any of America's great portraits. It
is gentle, mischievous and satirical. It is packed with sophisticated
visual puns and renders homage to a golden age of art -- the Northern
European late Gothic period -- without slavishly aping it.
In short, it's a crackling, iron-hard yet sinuously soft,
killer-diller study of a slice of humanity, perhaps of a bygone era
but one that resonates today, proclaiming something ancient and
enduring -- and something sacred, too.

Here is a link to another informative piece about the painting: The Art Institute of Chicago