American Gothic

American  

noun

1. a painting (1930) by Grant Wood.

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American Gothic Cultural  

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.

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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.

From Barron's

“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.”

From Los Angeles Times

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.

From Los Angeles Times

Oh, there’s also “American Gothic.”

From Los Angeles Times

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.

From New York Times