This photograph from Gordon Parks offers ideas for Figurative Bust Sculpture Assignment. The objects, gaze of figure and garment worn visually communicate an idea. The photo is a social commentary about the inequities in America during this time period.
American Gothic by Gordon Parks
Photography, 1942
Parks created this portrait of Ella Watson, a government cleaning woman, by positioning her in front of an American Flag and placing a broom and a mop in her hands, echoing in pose as well as in title Grant Wood’s by then iconic 1930 painting of rural American resilience American Gothic. Watson worked in the building of the Farm Security Administration, a program of the New Deal whose fellowship brought Parks to Washington, DC. Parks, who would go on to become the first African American photographer at Life magazine, was taken aback by the overt racism he encountered in the nation’s capital and saw in Watson a potent critique of the country’s inequalities as well as a version of American fortitude. Source: https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/130324
American Gothic
Grant Wood, American Painter, 1891 - 1942
In American Gothic, Grant Wood directly evoked images of an earlier generation by featuring a farmer and his daughter posed stiffly and dressed as if they were, as the artist put it, “tintypes from my old family album.” They stand outside of their home, built in an 1880s style known as Carpenter Gothic. Wood had seen a similar farmhouse during a visit to Eldon, Iowa.
When it was exhibited at the Art Institute in 1930, the painting became an instant sensation, its ambiguity prompting viewers to speculate about the figures and their story. Many understood the work to be a satirical comment on midwesterners out of step with a modernizing world. Yet Wood intended it to convey a positive image of rural American values, offering a vision of reassurance at the beginning of the Great Depression. Source: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/6565/american-gothic
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