American Gothic
Grant Wood's portrait of a stern bald farmer holding a pitchfork beside a tight-lipped woman in front of a wooden house — the canonical Midwestern parody template.
Origin
Grant Wood painted it in 1930 in Iowa, inspired by a small wooden house in Eldon with a single Gothic window. The models were his sister Nan and his dentist, Dr. McKeeby — not, as commonly assumed, a farmer couple, but a father and daughter (Wood's intent was deliberately ambiguous). Won the Art Institute of Chicago's 1930 prize and entered its collection, where it has hung ever since. Initially Iowans resented it as a mockery of rural life; the artist insisted it was an affectionate portrait.
Modern usage
The single most-parodied American painting. The pitchfork-holding pose with another figure beside the painter is the visual template for any joke about earnest, suspicious, slightly grim middle-American types — from Rocky Horror to Eminem album art to a thousand New Yorker cartoons.
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