American Gothic

noun

1. a painting (1930) by Grant Wood.

American Gothic

1. A painting by the twentieth-century American artist Grant Wood. It shows a gaunt farmer and a woman standing in front of a farmhouse; the man holds a pitchfork, and both wear severe expressions.

American Gothic has been the subject of many parodies on magazine covers and in advertising.

Example Sentences

Ellison’s back story bends toward American gothic.

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“American Gothic,” the first show he created, premiered in 1995 — an achievement that, he says, “meant a lot more than having ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ as a No. 1 record.”

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William Ashby McCloy’s 1936 “Lost Horizon” could be a gloss on Grant Wood’s 1930 “American Gothic,” this time with the farming couple crouched in defeat next to a plow and a drained water barrel in a bare dust-bowl landscape.

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Oh, there’s also “American Gothic.”

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Among the thousands of images are “New American Gothic,” by Ayana Ross, the winner of the 2021 Bennett Prize for women artists; “Emerald Girl,” a portrait in Lego bricks by Pauline Aubey; and the aptly titled “New Moon,” a 1980 serigraph by Alex Colville.

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