Grant Wood and his art remain a mystery decades after his death

Grant Wood’s painting "American Gothic" has filled me with both pride and unease since I was a kid.

I want to be a fan of Wood because he is Iowa’s most famous painter, because his family and mine share a Jones County heritage, and because Wood holds the distinction of creating arguably the most recognizable painting in the world besides Leonardo da Vinci’s "Mona Lisa."

The wary unease on the faces in "American Gothic" summed up my relationship to Wood as a painter and person — that is, until a new retrospective opened this spring at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City.