Arnold Comes of Age
{{good article}}
{{Short description|1930 painting by Grant Wood}}
{{Infobox Artwork
| image_file = Arnold Comes of Age.jpg
| image_upright = 1.3
| title = Arnold Comes of Age
| artist = Grant Wood
| year = 1930
| medium = Oil on pressed board
| height_metric = 26.75
| width_metric = 23
| metric_unit = cm
| imperial_unit = in
| museum = Sheldon Museum of Art
| city = Lincoln
}}
Arnold Comes of Age (originally Portrait of Arnold Pyle) is a 1930 oil painting by the American regionalist painter Grant Wood, created as a birthday gift for his studio assistant, Arnold Pyle. Wood took Pyle on as his protégé and was deeply affectionate towards him. The painting depicts a figure looking ahead in a rural landscape, as two nude men bathe in a river. It is reminiscent of Italian Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca's work, in particular The Resurrection, and it is interpreted as homoerotic from its detailing.
Background and painting
Grant Wood was a regionalist painter from Iowa. During the Great Depression, he became one of the more prominent regionalists of the country.{{sfn|Cheles|2016|p=106}} Arnold Comes of Age was completed in 1930 in celebration of the twenty-first birthday of his studio assistant, Arnold Pyle.{{sfn|Cheles|2016|p=112}} Pyle, a painter himself and protégé of Wood, won blue ribbons at the Iowa State Fair for his art depicting the Midwest in 1933, and the grand prize in 1936.{{sfn|Rasmussen|1995|pp=18, 20, 28}} He was heterosexual, and despite the affection that Wood showed him, did not romantically reciprocate—as Wood had done with many of his assistants, he disguised his outward affection as paternal love.{{sfn|Darnaude|2021|p=20}}
The painting was originally entitled Portrait of Arnold Pyle.{{sfn|Rasmussen|1995|p=17}} It depicts an awkward young man looking at the viewer as a butterfly lands on his shirt, set in a countryside while two men bathe in a nearby river.{{sfn|Kinloch|2014|pp=162–163}} It is made of oil and is displayed on pressed board.{{sfn|Cheles|2016|p=112}} Its dimensions are {{convert|26.75|in|cm}} tall by {{convert|23|in|cm}} across.{{sfn|Cheles|2016|p=112}}
Interpretation
The art critic Luciano Cheles says that many of Wood's paintings—including his famous American Gothic—were inspired by works produced during the Italian Renaissance, especially those of the fifteenth-century artist Piero della Francesca.{{sfn|Cheles|2016|p=106}} Arnold Comes of Age may have been inspired by his painting The Resurrection, as the paintings share several similarities.{{sfn|Cheles|2016|pp=112–114}} In both paintings, the central profile is "neatly" set apart from the background, looking at the viewer with a serious gaze; a figure with a distant look was a typical element of della Francesca's art.{{sfn|Cheles|2016|pp=112–114}} The paintings also have two trees framing them: in Wood, one young and one mature, and in della Francesca, one bare and one full of leaves.{{sfn|Cheles|2016|pp=112–113}} For Cheles, these contrasting trees represent life and death, as well as a general transition between two states.{{sfn|Cheles|2016|p=113}} Della Francesca also painted The Baptism of Christ, and Cheles argues that the nude bathers in Wood's painting are similar to that work.{{sfn|Cheles|2016|p=113}} These bathers may symbolize baptism, and consequently, one coming of age.{{sfn|Cheles|2016|p=113}}
Ulysses Grant Dietz, a former curator of The Newark Museum of Art, said that the painting indicates an "obvious love" for Arnold.{{sfn|Dietz|2018|pp=165, 167}} Details such as recurrent couplings (of trees, bushes, and stacks of hay) may demonstrate a love for Pyle, and the two nude swimmers in the back could represent the Christian figures Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.{{sfn|Darnaude|2021|p=20}} Wood chose to sign his name beside Pyle's beltbuckle—adorned with AP, for Arnold Pyle—perhaps so the two men could have their names forever linked.{{sfn|Darnaude|2021|p=20}} Arnold Comes of Age also depicts a butterfly—which was understood at the time as a gay symbol—landing on Arnold's shirt.{{sfn|Ventura|2018}} The painting is thought to be homoerotic,{{sfn|Doss|2018|p=40}} although critic Faye Hirsch says this interpretation allows researchers to make claims about Wood's life with only minimal evidence.{{sfn|Hirsch|2011|p=79}}
History
After Arnold Comes of Age was completed, Wood entered it into the 1930, Iowa State Fair Art Salon.{{sfn|Rasmussen|1995|p=17}} Wood was well-established at the time and had earlier exhibited at galleries in Paris.{{sfn|Rasmussen|1995|p=17}} However, as a regionalist committed to promoting the artistic movement, he decided to show Arnold Comes of Age and other paintings in Iowa instead.{{sfn|Rasmussen|1995|p=17}} Arnold Comes of Age won the grand prize, and his painting Stone City, Iowa won the landscape category.{{sfn|Rasmussen|1995|p=17}}
Arnold Comes of Age was displayed in a 1940 Nebraskan show alongside Stone City, Iowa and John B. Turner, Pioneer,{{sfn|Wells|1972|p=21}} a portrait of the father of his patron David Turner that Wood completed in 1929–30.{{sfn|Corn|1983|p=68}} These were all offered for sale, each at a price of between $300 and $400.{{sfn|Wells|1972|p=21}} The board of trustees for the Nebraska Art Association paid $300 for Arnold Comes of Age, while the Joslyn Art Museum of Omaha acquired Stone City, Iowa.{{sfn|Wells|1972|p=21}} It has since become one of the most valuable pieces within the Association's permanent collection,{{sfn|Wells|1972|p=21}} and resides at the Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln, Nebraska.{{sfn|Sheldon}} The Sheldon Museum of Art holds the artwork of the association, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and other collections.{{sfn|Wells|1972|p=39}}
For years, it was not shown publicly due to its significant deterioration: discoloration, extensive craquelure, and varnish disappearance plagued the painting.{{sfn|Doe|1985}} The bathing figures were, according to Donald Bartlett Doe of the Sheldon, "nearly obliterated".{{sfn|Doe|1985}} These problems began some ten years after its completion, but by 1985, they were addressed through restoration.{{sfn|Doe|1985}}
References
=Citations=
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=Bibliography=
{{refbegin}}
- {{cite journal |last1=Cheles |first1=Luciano |title=The Italian Renaissance in American Gothic: Grant Wood and Piero della Francesca |journal=American Art |date=Spring 2016 |volume=30 |issue=1 |pages=106–124 |doi=10.1086/686551|s2cid=190856739 }}
- {{Cite book|last=Corn |first=Wanda M. |author-link=Wanda M. Corn |url=https://archive.org/details/grantwoodregiona0000corn |url-access=registration |title=Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision |year=1983 |publisher=Minneapolis Institute of Art; Yale University Press |isbn=0-300-03103-3 |oclc=9324205}}
- {{cite journal |last1=Darnaude |first1=Ignacio |title=Grant Wood left tipoffs all over |journal=The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide |date=1 November 2021 |issue=November–December 2021 |id={{Gale|A680295004}} |url=https://glreview.org/article/grant-wood-left-tipoffs-all-over/ }}
- {{cite journal |last1=Dietz |first1=Ulysses Grant |title=Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables |journal=The Journal of Modern Craft |date=4 May 2018 |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=165–167 |doi=10.1080/17496772.2018.1493789|s2cid=218838538 }}
- {{cite journal |last1=Doe |first1=Donald Bartlett |title=Before and after |journal=Resource/Reservoir |date=1985 |volume=1 |issue=3 |url=https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=sheldonpubs |access-date=16 November 2021 |publisher=Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery}}
- {{cite journal |last1=Doss |first1=Erika |title=Grant Wood's queer parody: American humor during the Great Depression |journal=Winterthur Portfolio |date=March 2018 |volume=52 |issue=1 |pages=3–45 |doi=10.1086/697497|s2cid=166213182 }}
- {{cite journal |last1=Hirsch |first1=Faye |title=Seeing queerly |journal=Art in America |date=1 February 2011 |url=https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/seeing-queerly-62877/ |volume=99 |issue=2 }}
- {{cite journal |last1=Kinloch |first1=David |title=Hide and seek: Mimesis and narrative in ekphrasis as translation |journal=New Writing |date=4 May 2014 |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=155–166 |doi=10.1080/14790726.2014.882959|s2cid=143847309 }}
- {{cite journal |last1=Rasmussen |first1=Chris |title=Agricultural lag: The Iowa State Fair Art Salon, 1854-1941 |journal=American Studies |date=1995 |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=5–29 |issn=0026-3079 |jstor=40643728 }}
- {{cite web |last1=Ventura |first1=Anya |title=Sultry night: Grand Wood's queer Midwest |website=Grant Wood Art Colony |url=https://grantwood.uiowa.edu/news/sultry-night-grant-woods-queer-midwest |access-date=15 November 2021 |date=10 June 2018}}
- {{cite book |last1=Wells |first1=Fred N. |title=The Nebraska Art Association: A history 1888–1971 |date=1972 |url=https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&context=sheldonpubs |access-date=15 November 2021 |oclc=10328820 }}
- {{cite web |title=Wood, Arnold |url=https://sheldonartmuseum.org/work/wood-arnold |website=Sheldon Museum of Art |access-date=15 November 2021 |ref={{harvid|Sheldon}}}}
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{{Grant Wood}}
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Category:Paintings by Grant Wood
Category:LGBTQ art in the United States