Art in focus 2017: The exhibitions to watch for this year

January 1, 2017
Early this year, the Royal Academy will cast light on American artists of the 1930s – the highlight of which is Grant Wood's iconic American Gothic on display for the first time in Britain – and, come autumn, another influential American figure will take centre stage. Jasper Johns is associated with key art movements of the 20th century, including Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism. This major new exhibition will feature his most recognisable pieces, as well as his more recent sculptural work.

Strong art shows in 2016 highlighted current events, recent art history

December 25, 2016
“Grant Wood and the American Farm,” on view through Saturday, was organized around “Spring Turning,” Wood’s only painting owned by Reynolda House — a bird’s-eye-view of a cultivated farm field in midwestern hill country, painted in 1936. Another inspiration for the show is the Reynolda estate’s original function as a state-of-the-art model farm. The overarching focus is the central place of agrarian life in this country from 1850 through the mid-20th century.

There was always good and bad figurative art

December 19, 2016
The Royal Academy’s ‘America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s’ (25 February–4 June) will also concentrate on works by figurative artists of the period – among them Charles Sheeler, Thomas Hart Benton, and Edward Hopper – and include that great icon, American Gothic by Grant Wood. Wood’s uncompromising depiction of an austere Midwest farmer and his wife (posed for by his sister and his dentist) in front of their gothic wooden homestead, evokes the harshness of life in the American heartland during the Depression years, in the way that no non-figurative work could ever do. It justly deserves its status, and is among that small band of works that have penetrated so deeply into the public consciousness that they can be appropriated by cartoonists and others without further reference.

Pages