In need of a couple’s costume this Halloween? Try a calico apron over a dark dress, a low bun with one loose strand, a cameo broach at your throat; dress a partner in overalls and wire-rimmed glasses, holding a three-pronged pitchfork. It won’t take much to be immediately recognizable as the duo from American Gothic , Grant Wood’s 1930 painting and subject of Wanda Corn’s new book, The Couple with the Pitchfork: American Gothic from Easel to Icon. Why, Corn wants to know, did this painting become so iconic?

Corn, an eminent scholar of American art, has been thinking about this question for five decades. The painting intersected with her own trajectory as an art historian and with her personal history as a descendent of the Midwest: the book includes a photograph of her grandparents posed side-by-side at their home in Indiana, her grandfather in denim overalls, and her grandmother with hair pulled back and a homemade dress.…