American Gothic by Grant Wood

This is Grant Wood's 'American Gothic', painted in 1930 and held at the Art Institute of Chicago. It's among the most recognized American paintings of the 20th century, yet most people only see the stern faces and that pitchfork. There is more hidden in the details.

The pitchfork's three tines are deliberate: they form a perfect visual rhyme with the pointed Gothic window on the house above. Wood made compositional choices that fuse the man and his labor to the architecture behind him, turning a farm tool into a kind of scepter.

Then look at the woman's collar. The oval cameo brooch holds a tiny painted silhouette figure inside it, a painting within a painting. Wood's dentist modeled for the farmer, and his own sister posed as the daughter, though their stiff proximity often reads to viewers as husband and wife.

The house itself still stands in Eldon, Iowa. Wood saw it through a car window and decided it needed the right people standing in front. What detail do you notice first when the pitchfork and the eyes finally let you look away?