Grant Wood Country

On Friday, we went to Anamosa, IA on our way to Bartlett, IL. We often go through Anamosa because (1) I lived there from 1946-1950, the years I was in high school, and (2) we stop to see Betty Remley, who was the choir director in my father's church during those high school years. Betty is in her 90's now and still as sharp as a tack, and we always enjoy visiting her. But this time, there was a third reason. When we were staying with Roger and Bonnie Hull back in Salem, OR, I picked up off the shelf next to our bed a new book on Grant Wood by R. Tripp Evans, professor of art history at Wheaton College (MA), and started reading. I was totally drawn in: it is a radically new interpretation of Grant Wood, one that challenges the more simple-minded view of Wood as a regional artist celebrating small-town American values, and putting in its place a very complex and conflicted artist, a closeted homosexual who both intentionally and subliminally expressed in his paintings the full range of his inner ambivalence and anguish over his own self-image, his sexuality, and his ambivalence over issues of manliness and the prevailing bohemian image of the artist in the culture of his time. Probably no other interpreter of Wood has so successfully penetrated the outright weirdness of many of Wood's paintings that most critics have chosen either not to see or not to comment on. Wood was born outside Anamosa, and he is buried in the Riverside Cemetery there, within view of my mother's grave. There is a Grant Wood center in Anamosa, and after reading Evans' work, I was eager to revisit it. I had also hoped we might get to the Cedar Rapids Art Museum which has many of his works on display. That didn't happen. But we did get to the Anamosa center, and the cemetery.

The Grant Wood center in Anamosa has one outstanding feature: it has a large collection of parodies of Grant Wood's American Gothic, which may be the most-parodied painting ever, save, perhaps, the Mona Lisa. Scores of parodies are framed on the wall, and hundreds are ensconced in a large display of movable, plastic boards. You could spend hours looking at them all. They also had a trove of postcards which Ellen pounced on. We didn't have a lot of time, but it was a fun visit.

The original American Gothic by Grant Wood

Here are three parodies from the Grant Wood Center in Anamosa:

A Particularly timely parody from the 1990's

,,, and two timeless classics:

Here are two cemetery views:

The Wood family monument

Grant Wood's grave marker

And my personal story:

The parsonage where I lived during high school

First Congregational Church, where my dad was the pastor

We had lunch with Betty Remley at the assisted living home where she lives, and at the table with us was Ardyce Conley, also in her 90's. I worked the Christmas season of 1949 for her husband, Dale, who ran a jewelry store in Anamosa. At the next table was a couple, the Richardsons, who were married by my dad in September of 1946 and were about to celebrate their 70th anniversary!