149 Paintings You Really Need to See in North America. Julian Porter

      Who are these people? Parodied, mocked, damned with familiarity.

      Wood’s subjects, farmer and daughter, were modelled after Wood’s sister, Nan, and his dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby. The daughter seems anxious, as if reflecting on a past love or trouble sitting uneasily on her mind. Her sophisticated clothing suggests something of a different time, but the tiny, loose curl hanging from her right ear hints at hidden sensuality, in contrast to the Midwestern propriety. The father is defiant and stolid but seems refined also — as shown by the gold button beyond his class and time. Wood chose these models because they could easily be the inhabitants of the “American Gothic–style” house of the title. They are also the perfect couple to represent his depiction of rural America and the Great Depression, survivors in a time of chaos.

      An advocate for the Regionalist movement, Wood refused to paint any large urban spaces. He spent his time reimagining and interpreting rural America on canvas. As part of his quest for regionalism, he returned to Iowa in the summer of 1930, where he stumbled onto this home, still standing today in Eldon. Gothic-styled homes mimicked the timelessness of the great European cathedrals, beautiful in their architecture and detail. This specific home Wood chose to paint has the pointed church window. It looks pasted onto the structure but, aesthetically, cements the painting.

      Pop culture has embraced American Gothic for years by adapting it, over and over, for its intended audience. Simple changes to the characters, clothes, props, and background make for an easy, successful manipulation. On a doormat, a caption says: “One nice person and one old grouch live here.” It has been on magazine covers and TV show title pages, in newspaper articles, posted on the street. The media has been successfully using it to express all kinds of cultural, environmental, and social issues in a fresh, humorous way. Many of this generation recognize the work from its countless iterations, offering immortality in its own, if ironic, way.

      SG

      Museum of Contemporary Art

      29. Study for a Portrait (1949)

      Francis Bacon (1909–92)

      Francis Bacon, Study for a Portrait, 1949

      Oil on canvas, 149.4 x 130.6 cm

      Gift of Joseph and Jory Shapiro (1976.44)

      Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

      © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. DACS/SODRAC, 2017.

      Photo credit: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

      Francis Bacon’s existential angst is so palpable, so raw, so transfixing it is irresistible. His early exposure to war and alienation from his family (because of his homosexuality) clearly presaged the demonic paintings he would later create. They remain transformative on many levels, not the least aesthetically.

      Already influenced by Surrealism and Cubism, by the mid-forties Bacon had come to a very pivotal point in his work, creating Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) at the Tate Britain. These paintings integrated movement, a constant and driving theme throughout the rest of his works. In Study for a Portrait (1952), also at the Tate Britain, he cries in pain or horror, howling in outrage at the human condition. Throughout his later work, Bacon often depicted a single person, typically isolated in a room. The viewer is rendered helpless, uncomfortable, unable to help as the subject is boxed in, but maybe there is no help warranted, no escape to be arranged. Many of these works use heavy paint, rigid surfaces, and a second interior in the frame.

      In his Heads series, of which VI is one, Bacon slathered blacks and greys along the unprimed side of the canvas. Bacon preferred to paint on the opposite side of the canvas as he found the ridged grooves of the canvas held and displayed the paint in a more powerful form than the primed side. Head VI is the painting in the series that uses colour, displaying an open-mouthed man, in a purple cape, likely reflecting the hopelessness of the post–Second World War, apocalyptic nuclear age.

      If there is a primal scream, one common to us all, that we can almost hear, like the famous Munch(s) or Ginsberg’s Howl , Head VI is it.

      Not to be missed is Bacon’s Figure with Meat series of works, based on Velasquez’s Pope Innocent X (found in Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome), a sensational version of which is in the nearby Art Institute of Chicago.

      SG

      Chapter 4

      Cleveland, Ohio

      Cleveland Museum of Art

      30. Paul III (1996)

      Chuck Close (1940–)

      Chuck Close, Paul III, 1996

      Oil on canvas, 259. 1 x 213. 4 cm

      Pace Gallery

      © Chuck Close, courtesy Pace Gallery

      Photo credit: Ellen Page Wilson, courtesy Pace Gallery

      What achievement, what a force of artistic nature! Spellbinding and powerful, simply thrilling!

      These are generally my reactions, sometimes all of a moment, to Chuck Close. He offers viewers the “wow-ee” factor!

      Reinventing himself as an artist at age seventy-four, having shucked off material and personal adornment, Close has faced physical challenges throughout his life. He suffered from dyslexia as a child and has battled a neuromuscular disease. Close is now restricted to his wheelchair, after a fall that left him paralyzed from the neck down. He adapted by abandoning the paintbrush for a paint sprayer as well as tying a paint brush to his wrist to avoid the use of his limp hands.

      Having an early education in art, Close discovered his talent for lifelike portraits dominated by black and white. In the late 1970s, he introduced colour. Irrespective of the colouration, Close consistently painted portraits almost indistinguishable from photographs.

      After his fall, Close began experimenting with new styles of portraiture, working with coloured dots and grids, the latter by dividing the canvas into four sections and completing each square section one at a time. The result is dynamic, neo-Pointillism portraiture.

      Paul III (1996) is of American painter Paul Cadmus (1904–99). From any angle the grids are indistinguishable. The piercing and luminous sapphire in his eyes and deep laugh lines feature prominently, but not from saturated brush strokes. Instead, these features are an accumulation and combination of different coloured dots. From afar, the viewer can detect the eyes and facial nuances of the portrait, but, unlike other portraitures, on closer inspection the facial aspects disappear.

      Close blurs the lines between recognition and perception, using spatial distance as a form of distortion and resolution. He has now veered from painting people to focusing on self-portraits, perhaps as a form of self-discovery or self-enlightenment. Or a memento mori. Close’s oeuvre provides a unique viewing experience, which one can experience at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where Lucas I is displayed, or Stanley II at the Guggenheim, as well as a Self-Portrait I and II and Paul IV at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

      SG

      Chapter 5

      Dallas, Texas

      Dallas Museum of Art