system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why is "American Gothic" such an iconic image?

I've seen this painting in cartoons, movies, TV shows and in dozens of homages and sight gags, but I don't know anything about it other than what it looks like, nor do I know anything about the artist. Why?
gpt
Grant Wood First displayed it in 1930, right at the beginning of the depression.

Consider what was happening to art at the time. Ever since film cameras were first developed, and becoming more increasingly common, artists tended to move more and more away from representational works to more abstract works. At the time Grant Wood painted American Gothic, abstract artists in Europe were the talk of the art world.

Grant Wood himself had studied much of this while in Europe, and came back, ironically, with a healthier respect for representational art.

Despite every person and object being so detailed, you can still read plenty into the painting itself. The more you look at it, the more you see, too. For example:

* Why does such a simple farmhouse, with its focus on function, have such an unusually decorative window upstairs?
* Why is the man looking directly at the viewer, while the woman is looking off into the distance somewhere?
* What's the story behind the almost emotionless, straightforward look on their faces?
* In a house that looks like it has never seen an electric light bulb, why is the upstairs curtain closed in the middle of the day?

Part of it's charm is that so much can be read into it. It's been seen as a "comic valentine", as both praise of and insult to life in the midwest, and much more.

It's iconic status really came from being a depiction of straightforward basics, at a time when the country was heading into the Great Depression. It was taken by many as a reminder of the pioneer spirit of days gone by, and the values on which to focus in the coming years.

It's one of those cases of being the right image at the right time, which is what makes a true cultural icon.