Hiding in Plain Sight - James Maroney Inc.

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This was the first appearance in his work of a complete phallic symbol in outline; and thus he initiated what would, henceforth, be the basso profundo in his work for the remainder of his life. But at this early stage of his career, Wood’s erotic symbolism is so well encrypted that, but for this analysis, it may have gone forever unremarked. Looking for something similarly erect, if not even more recondite, the very vertical snake plant makes its first appearance in Woman with Plants, 1929, Wood’s portrait of his mother. Woman with Plants, 1929 It is impossible, I think, to paint a picture of one’s mother and not load it. Yet, according to Garwood “Wood hadn’t meant the portrait to represent his mother: in choosing the snake plant, he was thinking in terms of design qualities and simply needed something up and down.” 51 In this, only his second picture to include weighted symbols, the begonia, barn and windmill also make their first appearances, about which more shortly. Hattie Weaver Wood, who does not look us in the eye, is said to have raised petunias, verbenas, geraniums, begonias and snake plants. 52 The snake plant, which suggests hardiness but also solitude and desolation, is alternatively called Widow’s Tongue or Mother-in-law’s Tongue. A “plant” is a stand-in for something else, a surrogate. Wood makes abundantly clear that the plants in the picture are surrogates, assigning an impersonal, matter-of-fact title: [nameless] woman-with-[undifferentiated] plants. If these were not symbols, the reappearance of the snake plant and begonia sitting silently on the porch just over the shoulder of his sister, the other domineering woman in his life, making her first appearance in American Gothic, is difficult to explain; they do not ever appear again. Not mentioned much, and apparently without salutary—or disquieting—attributes, the significance of the begonia eludes us. 51 Garwood, op. cit., p. 109 52 Taylor, op. cit., p. 93, suggests that Hattie Wood refused to look at her son because there was something about him she could not acknowledge. 30
Plants—Oedipal, generational, incestual—may just be plants, living things typically cared for by women. But to children, plants are inanimate things that women appear inscrutably to nurture. As a child, Grant Wood may have been curious about, or even jealous of, the attention his mother and sister showered upon them. Corn sees the snake plant as “an obvious reference to [his mother’s] much-praised talents as a gardener…more importantly, the snake plant, well known on the frontier for its hardiness, signified the sitter’s resilience and strength of character, qualities Wood felt were indigenous, not only to his mother, but to the Midwestern pioneer.” 53 Taylor refers to Woman with Plants as “a loving rendition of the old woman as Mona Lisa.” 54 But patently, the “snake” plant is named for the viper, for the “woman as serpent” theme from Genesis. Hattie’s snake plant stands erect, like a phallus; as held between her two hands, one on either side, it is an ensemble, in outline, of the whole male genitalia. Or, more horrifying, the plant signifies a Harpy who, because in Greek mythology she has snake-like lower parts, Wood purposely shows from only the waist up. Be whichever she may, mother as hardy pioneer/wife or as loathsome, voracious Harpy, Wood puts a snake plant, with appallingly plain connotations, in the hands of his mother. Wood purchased the cameo adorning his mother in Woman with Plants in Italy and, upon his return home in 1924, presented it to her as a gift. 55 He put it again, one year later, on his sister Nan in American Gothic. By placing it just so at the throats of the women under whose control he had chaffed as a boy, the cameo is like a coup counted upon one’s antagonists, a talisman of that time in Europe where, already aged thirtythree and out of their sight for the first time, he was free to explore his sexuality. And, what are we to make of the little lock of hair, which in order to “show her humanity” Wood says he allowed to fall off Nan’s ovoid head, which was, in Corn’s prophetic words, “the only unruly element in an otherwise immaculate conception?” Do we not see that it so closely resembles the morphology of the spermatozoa? 56 53 Corn, op. cit., p. 70 54 Taylor, , op. cit., 55 Ibid, p. 79 56 Corn, op. cit., p. 133 § 31
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 and 14: to categorize him according to his
Page 15 and 16: Remember that symbolism’s goal is
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: Window, 1927-29, we first see “an
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

Hiding in Plain Sight - James Maroney Inc.

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