Curriculum Materials: Art in America
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Image 19 Grant Wood Questions: |
Think Questions Teacher Answer Key
1. Grant Wood was a member of a group of American artists called REGIONALISTS. Based on this painting and the name of the movement, what do you think regionalists painted? (Distinctive characteristics of a region of the United States.) What region is represented in this painting? (The title indicates that this is West Branch, Iowa, in the midwestern United States.) What physical aspects of rural Iowa did Wood emphasize? (Flat rural landscape, corn fields, wooden farm buildings, deciduous trees, changing seasons.) What values does he emphasize? (Family, home, neighbors, farm work, the idea that anyone can become a U.S. president.) How would this painting look different if Herbert Hoover had been born in the southwest United States? In California? In Alaska?
2. Grant Wood's LINEAR treatment and simplification of forms, use of PATTERN, and extensive use of detail give the scene in this painting the appearance of a storybook world. Why might Grant Wood have wanted to make his paintings of rural America look more like storybook worlds than the real world? How would your feelings about this painting change if he had represented the scene NATURALISTICALLY?
3. Grant Wood and his contemporaries in American art during the 1930s and 1940s liked to raise ordinary experiences of everyday life to legendary proportions. How did Wood do this in the painting of Herbert Hoover's birthplace? Why do you think American artists at this time wanted to elevate common experiences? Why would people living during the hard times of the Depression and two world wars want to see art that affirmed American values?
4. Grant Wood's painting shows how extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people. Has anything extraordinary ever happened to you or someone else you know? What? How would you represent this event in a painting without actually showing yourself or the other person?
5. How does Grant Wood's painting play upon the familiar American ideal that anyone can grow up to become president of the United States? Does this ideal hold true today? How do gender, race, and economic status affect one's ability to become president of the United States?
6. Compare and contrast Grant
Wood's
REGIONALIST painting
to Edward K. Thomas's View of Fort
Snelling. Consider: color, treatment of forms, space,
subject. Does either painting look
NATURALISTIC? Why or
why not? Does one look more naturalistic than the other? Can
you tell which artist is untrained and which one had
extensive training as a painter? What makes you think so?
What does Wood do to give the
impression that he is untrained despite his training?
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