Grant Wood and the Iowa State Fair
Author: Paul C. Juhl
Publisher:
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 139
ISBN-13:
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Author: Paul C. Juhl
Publisher:
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 139
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Chris Rasmussen
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Published: 2015-08-15
Total Pages: 228
ISBN-13: 1609383583
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMore than a century and a half after its founding, the Iowa State Fair is the state’s central institution, event, and symbol. New Jersey has the Shore; Kentucky has the Derby; Iowa has the Fair. The humble Iowa State Fairground ranks alongside the Great Pyramids at Giza and the Taj Mahal in the best-selling travel guide 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. During its annual run each August, the fair attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors who make the pilgrimage to the fairground to see the iconic butter cow, to ride the Old Mill, to walk through the livestock barns, and to people-watch. At the same time that they enjoy fried candy bars and roller coasters, Iowans also compete to raise the best corn and zucchinis, to make the best jams and jellies, to rear the finest sheep and goats, the largest cattle and hogs, and the handsomest horses. This tension between entertainment and agriculture goes back all the way to the fair’s founding in the mid-1800s, as historian Chris Rasmussen shows in this thought-provoking history. The fair’s founders had lofty aims: they sought to improve agriculture and foster a distinctively democratic American civilization. But from the start these noble intentions jostled up against people’s desire to have fun and make money, honestly or otherwise—not least because the fair had to pay for itself. In their effort to uplift rural life without going broke, the organizers of the Iowa State Fair debated the respectability of horse racing and gambling and struggled to find qualified livestock judges. Worried about the economic forces undermining rural families, they ran competitions to select the best babies and the “ideal” rural girl and boy while luring spectators with massive panoramas of earthquakes and fires, not to mention staged trainwrecks. In short, the Iowa State Fair has as much to tell us about human nature and American history as it does about growing corn.
Author: Wende Elliott
Publisher: The Countryman Press
Published: 2013-05-06
Total Pages: 137
ISBN-13: 1581577648
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBe transported into the private and cherished world of this celebrated American icon with tour of Grant Wood's home state.. Grant Wood, Iowa native, iconic Regionalist American artist, certainly left his mark on his home state. Wood’s American Gothic is one of America’s most recognizable paintings, his boyhood home is a registered landmark, and collections of his work grace museums far and near. Now you can tour his state with five itineraries that provide a detailed exploration of the historical context for his work. Grant Wood’s Iowa explores his role in the art world with self-guided museum tours, detailed discussions of specific works, information on the finest lodging and dining in the state, and, finally, “green” travel options, including rural bed and breakfasts, restaurants offering local organic menus, nightlife with local artists, and nature hikes to experience the landscape that inspired Wood. You’ll be transported into the private and cherished world of this celebrated American icon.
Author: Kate Jennings
Publisher: Gramercy
Published: 1994
Total Pages: 116
ISBN-13: 9780517102985
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume illuminates the life and work of American painter Grant Wood (1891-1942). He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly the painting American Gothic, an iconic image of the 20th century. The author provides insightful narrative and more than 60 color plates in this celebration of Grant Wood.
Author: Iowa. Dept. of Agriculture. State Fair Board
Publisher:
Published: 1928
Total Pages: 818
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: John Duggleby
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Published: 1996-03
Total Pages: 69
ISBN-13: 0811812421
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFollows the life of the Iowa farm boy who struggled to realize his talents and who painted in Paris but returned home to focus on the land and people he knew best.
Author: Ron Playle
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 136
ISBN-13: 9780738540375
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMore than 190 vintage postcards provide glimpses of the historic fair from the 1890s through the mid-1950s. The quintessential event has an attendance topping 1 million each year.
Author: Darrell Garwood
Publisher: Greenwood
Published: 1971
Total Pages: 280
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOctober 2006
Author: R. Tripp Evans
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2010-10-05
Total Pages: 433
ISBN-13: 0307594335
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHe claimed to be “the plainest kind of fellow you can find. There isn’t a single thing I’ve done, or experienced,” said Grant Wood, “that’s been even the least bit exciting.” Wood was one of America’s most famous regionalist painters; to love his work was the equivalent of loving America itself. In his time, he was an “almost mythical figure,” recognized most supremely for his hard-boiled farm scene, American Gothic, a painting that has come to reflect the essence of America’s traditional values—a simple, decent, homespun tribute to our lost agrarian age. In this major new biography of America’s most acclaimed, and misunderstood, regionalist painter, Grant Wood is revealed to have been anything but plain, or simple . . . R. Tripp Evans reveals the true complexity of the man and the image Wood so carefully constructed of himself. Grant Wood called himself a farmer-painter but farming held little interest for him. He appeared to be a self-taught painter with his scenes of farmlands, farm workers, and folklore but he was classically trained, a sophisticated artist who had studied the Old Masters and Flemish art as well as impressionism. He lived a bohemian life and painted in Paris and Munich in the 1920s, fleeing what H. L. Mencken referred to as “the booboisie” of small-town America. We see Wood as an artist haunted and inspired by the images of childhood; by the complex relationship with his father (stern, pious, the “manliest of men”); with his sister and his beloved mother (Wood shared his studio and sleeping quarters with his mother until her death at seventy-seven; he was forty-four). We see Wood’s homosexuality and how his studied masculinity was a ruse that shaped his work. Here is Wood’s life and work explored more deeply and insightfully than ever before. Drawing on letters, the artist’s unfinished autobiography, his sister’s writings, and many never-before-seen documents, Evans’s book is a dimensional portrait of a deeply complicated artist who became a “National Symbol.” It is as well a portrait of the American art scene at a time when America’s Calvinistic spirit and provincialism saw Europe as decadent and artists were divided between red-blooded patriotic men and “hothouse aesthetes.” Thomas Hart Benton said of Grant Wood: “When this new America looks back for landmarks to help gauge its forward footsteps, it will find a monument standing up in the midst of the wreckage . . . This monument will be made out of Grant Wood’s works.”
Author: Iowa State Fair Board
Publisher:
Published: 1944
Total Pages: 422
ISBN-13:
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