Grant Wood is known for his stylised and subtly humorous scenes of rural people, Iowa cornfields, and mythic subjects from American history. Wood advocated for a realistic style and recognisable subjects that showed local places and common people, a radically different approach from European modernism and its push towards abstraction.

His later works continued to celebrate, and sometimes satirise, Midwestern values and people. The iconic imagery he created in American Gothic and subsequent works has been adapted and parodied regularly, serving as a reflection of changing American values and ways.