May 2009
Found in Chicago, April 2009, in the plaza next to the Chicago Tribune Building, on Michigan Avenue, just north of the river.
“God Bless America”, by J. Seward Johnson, 2005, the Sculpture Foundation.
A 25-foot-tall take-off (or tribute to?) on “American Gothic” by Grant Wood (1930). For the original painting, of an upright Midwestern family on the farm, Wood used his sister and their dentist in Iowa as models. Over the years the painting has elicited admiration, disgust, reverence and ridicule, and has been parodied and copied many times. Wood was a Regionalist, campaigning for pure, folkloric, rural American art, but ironically he had a fondness for European art, which inspired his famous painting. This take-off is also ironic, as the suitcase is plastered with stickers from travels around the world, especially Asia.
What fun! Every visitor we saw wanted to have a photo taken cosy-ing up to this “God Bless America”.
This is a different take on the street artistes pretending to be statues!
That’s true. I wonder what makes the artists choose a certain painting or statue?