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“No Reasonable Person”
“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)
You likely recognize that scene above in Grant Wood’s Parson Weems’ Fable where George Washington in his youth, confronted by his father upon being caught in the act of chopping down the legendary cherry tree, uttered his fabled confession, “I cannot tell a lie.” Wood made his name in American modern art when his American Gothic won $300 and a solid degree of fame at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930. As one reviewer, artist Sam McKinnis, wrote of Wood’s portrayal of the Parson Weems’ Fable in our own time:
Wood’s entire approach here zeros in on the deceitfulness inherent in the myth he has illustrated, doubling down on said deceit by way of a complex formal drama amounting to capriccio, a play-within-a-play on canvas portraying liars performing the performance of not telling lies. What’s more, and not for nothing, the opportunity to closely consider this painting could not have arrived at a more desperately stupid time to be alive in this country.
The American Revolution is the product of Western Civilization’s so-called Age of Reason. Generally speaking in terms of historical periodization, the Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment, produced thinkers in Europe and its imperialist colonies in the so-called New World over the period on either side of the…