American Gothic: MotherPie's Parody...

America's best known painting has left its home at the Art Institute of Chicago and is now on view at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.   Grant Wood painted it in 1930 and created it as a visual pun and people have read a multitude of meanings into it ever since.  Grant always denied it was a satire of the Midwestern American culture.  Regardless, it has become the symbol of America at a certain point in our history.

It has also been the continual focus of parodies. 

MotherPie's parody represents the new and the old face of Neighbor America: Condi Rice as a new symbol of not only of America's face abroad, but of the  of political career potential for women.   The names of two women are now being bandied about as potential presidential fodder. Mr. Rogers, who died in 2003, was a cultural symbol of the kind and welcoming neighbor for children learning about the world from television -- the oldest children now in their 30s.  You can click the photo to enlarge it.

Gordon Parks, who captured black America as a photographer for Life Magazine and who made the 1971 film Shaft, died at 93 last week.  He made a photographic parody, American Gothic, 1942.  Here is a blog write-up on Parks with his American Gothic photo.

The Washington Post on American Gothic here.  Another photo parody of Condi Rice here.

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[MotherPie]

Here are more Parodies on flickr

[MotherPie]

Also, another one of mine