Hiding in Plain Sight - James Maroney Inc.

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Chapter I Homoeroticism and American Gothic: an Icon of Americana Reconsidered A merican Gothic may well be the most thoroughly analyzed painting in the history of American art, all of it an attempt to shake down the picture for its essential message. Art historians, social anthropologists, movie critics, political analysts, cultural historians, retired museum directors, close relatives and even closer friends—the list goes on—have produced a torrent of theories on the seemingly simple genesis and ultimately puzzling significance of this picture. Many writers have articulated important insights but after a while, they all merge into one inconclusive heap. Or, at any event, none has risen to the top. All we know at this point is that American Gothic is a very recondite picture. But the wonder is not that the picture engages so many plain folks, critics and scholars. It is that none of them has ever seen a phallic symbol in the outlines of the gothic window and the two, curiously oval heads of the figures. Don’t see it? This is precisely the moment to remind my (incredulous) readers that we were never supposed to. Surely, a secret too closely, or too long, kept is no fun. Wood was practicing steganography, the art of concealing one message beneath the text of another such that it will appear to those who are not the intended recipients, to be something else, commonly another text, an article, a shopping list, or a picture—in this American Gothic, 1930 case, of a goofy Iowa farmer and his young, spinster-like daughter/wife. American Gothic was an immediate success and for some reason, it drew a lot of fire. But if, in 1930, Wood’s alter-ego was a timid, deeply closeted homosexual, he would have hid his message—and with it his temerity—very, very well. And, if he were alive today, that is just as he would want it to remain. 14
Remember that symbolism’s goal is the rational rearrangement of seemingly incongruent ideas. 28 To make obvious what was intended to be deeply encoded or to provide a key alongside the formulation, once successfully completed, defeats the artist’s purpose. The literature tells us that the little house in Eldon, Iowa where he conceived the picture appealed to Wood because of “the Gothic window prominently placed in the gable. With his fondness for repeating geometry, Wood immediately envisioned a long-faced and lean couple…to complement the house and echo its predominantly vertical lines.” 29 And this: “American Gothic combines a personal, iconography drawing upon a visual pun, portrait caricature, comic satire and rural regionalism with an eccentric unification of ‘decorative elements’ derived from local sources…the modest, Carpenter Gothic house abounding with social and cultural implications.” 30 Or this: “[Wood] thought the house a form of borrowed pretentiousness, a structural absurdity, to put a Gothic-style window in such a flimsy, frame house.” I have found several instances where American, Carpenter-Gothic houses are referred to as “queer.” But it was not that, or “repeating geometry” or the chance to “make a pun on the structure’s flimsy absurdity” or the “long-faced and lean couple” that caught Wood’s attention. It was only the diverging lines in the mullion of the window that echoed the lines of the glans penis as it emerges from a man’s foreskin. 31 A couple, their oval heads positioned below and to either side of the mullion, one a little higher than the other, would complete the figure. A man who worries that he may be sick in the head because he sees sexual innuendo in everything goes to see his psychotherapist. The shrink sits him down and shows him a book of Rorschach Tests, asking him to describe what he sees in each. “Well,” says the patient, “here I see a woman giving oral sex to a man.” “Hmm...” says the Doctor. Very interesting. And here?” “That one is a picture of a couple making love doggie-style.” “Uh-huh. And this one?” “I see two women doing sixty-nine on one another: I like that one!” 28 There are, in the literature, numerous observations upon the pitchfork, upon its significance and the echo of its three tines in the farmer’s coveralls but none at all upon the fork’s shaft, which is what the farmer holds in his hand. Byron McKeeby, the dentist who posed for American Gothic had exceptionally large hands. Wood is supposed to have remarked upon seeing them: “You know what that is? That’s the hand of a man who can do things!” Cited in Thomas Hoving, American Gothic: The Biography of Grant Wood’s American Masterpiece (New York: Penguin Books, 2005) p. 41 29 Corn, op. cit., p. 129 30 James Dennis, Grant Wood: A Study in American Art and Culture, (New York: The Viking Press, 1975) pp. 79-80 31 The window in the Eldon house was, in reality, almost square. Wood narrowed and elongated it to better reflect his message. See Dennis, op. cit., p. 80 15
Page 1 and 2: Hiding in Plain Sight: Decoding the
Page 3 and 4: Summary The image we have today of
Page 5 and 6: Introduction I n Return from Bohemi
Page 7 and 8: sensibility prevented him from mock
Page 9 and 10: Foreword: Art Historical Methodolog
Page 11 and 12: Unlike Robert Hughes, who applied t
Page 13: to categorize him according to his
Page 17 and 18: e sufficiently obsessed to want to
Page 19 and 20: insistently inflicted upon itself.
Page 21 and 22: Chapter II The Author’s Methodolo
Page 23 and 24: Chapter III Sojourn in Munich: Wood
Page 25 and 26: Prior to his departure for Munich,
Page 27 and 28: conveyed her tenderness—and the p
Page 29 and 30: Window, 1927-29, we first see “an
Page 31 and 32: Plants—Oedipal, generational, inc
Page 33 and 34: excavating a deep, dark hole. 58 A
Page 35 and 36: Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two
Page 37 and 38: pastures. As such, Haying and The N
Page 39 and 40: Chapter V Xenophobia in 20 th Centu
Page 41 and 42: The hand pump, with 4 appearances,
Page 43 and 44: anatomically intriguing throat in V
Page 45 and 46: feathers, unmistakably similar to t
Page 47 and 48: historians, as was H. W. Janson, an
Page 49 and 50: At this late stage in his career, W
Page 51 and 52: The years 1932-33 were characterize
Page 53 and 54: with gin. The success of female imp
Page 55 and 56: I aver that Wood’s fascination wi
Page 57 and 58: claim descent. 88 That interpretati
Page 59 and 60: of the fence, without which we woul
Page 61 and 62: anthropomorphizing the contours of
Page 63 and 64: hand pump, chickens, hands, horses,
Page 65 and 66:
left-leaning artists all over the w
Page 67 and 68:
the catalyst required for making su
Page 69 and 70:
keep out blacks, Jews, Catholics an
Page 71 and 72:
dispensing it. The dilemma was that
Page 73 and 74:
explain Nan’s extravagantly wavy,
Page 75 and 76:
the ascendance of both Nazi and Sta
Page 77 and 78:
that his outward life and work did
Page 79 and 80:
Obviously, certain lines like “Ga
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Hiding in Plain Sight - James Maroney Inc.

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