BOOK: The Couple with the Pitchfork

Hardcover

Price:

$49.95/£42.00

ISBN:

Published (US):

Oct 27, 2026

Published (UK):

Dec 22, 2026

Copyright:

2026

Pages:

312

Size:

8 x 10.5 in.

Illus:

240 color illus.

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.

Author

Wanda M. Corn is the Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor Emerita in Art History at Stanford University. She is the author of The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915–1935; Women Building History: Public Art at the 1893 Columbian Exposition; and Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern.

Praise

"Art historian Corn expertly uses Grant Wood’s 1930 painting American Gothic as a lens through which to explore artistic and cultural debates. . . . The author draws on a dazzlingly diverse range of homages to and parodies of the painting . . . to unpack how the painting has served as a site for American identity to be negotiated and remade. It’s an illuminating, wide-ranging examination of the many afterlifes of a classic image."—Publishers Weekly

"In this penetrating, deeply researched study, [Wanda Corn] expands on work she began in 1981, explicating the image, recounting [Grant] Wood’s personal and professional life, and tracing the painting’s reception and transformation from 1930 to the present. . . . A fresh, engaging look at an iconic artwork."—Kirkus Reviews starred review

“The Couple with the Pitchfork culminates Wanda Corn’s career-spanning research into Grant Wood and his most famous painting. She thoroughly grounds readers in the creation and reception of American Gothic, deftly weaving together Wood’s artistic practice and the many cultural factors that impacted its reception. From artwork to icon, Corn explores how the image became so famous and the subject of ongoing artistic reimagining and visual culture appropriation. A must-read!”—Sarah Kelly Oehler, Art Institute of Chicago