Artist: Grant Wood (American, 1891-1942)
Title: Lilies of the Alley
Date: 1925
Accession #: 00.07.07
Medium: Mixed media
Dimensions: 12 x 7 in.
Acquired by: Bob and Barbara Woodward Family
About the Artist: Sculpture is a medium in which Grant Wood rarely worked, especially after he became famous for his paintings. But in the 1920s, when he was known only in Cedar Rapids, he often produced objects that were whimsical and clever and that showed his connection to the local community. Using gears, bottle caps and all sorts of thrown away hardware that he could have actually found in Cedar Rapids alleys, he concocted a mechanical bouquet whose stems he placed into plaster and then “planted” in a common clay flowerpot.
While the Lilies of the Alley were not intended as major artistic statements, they do suggest that Wood knew about certain avant-garde ideas, which seem quite ordinary to us today, such as those involved in collage and, more to the point, assemblage. Both of these modern techniques had grown out of cubism in the second decade of the 20th century. Picasso in particular was known for his integration of “found objects,” ordinary things from daily life, into a work of art. In addition, the use of “junk” materials was also associated with Dada objects that insisted on the role of wit and chance in art. On his trips to France in the 1920s and by reading contemporary art magazines, Wood could have easily learned about the nontraditional techniques and philosophies circulating in avant-garde circles.