American Gothic is a 1930 painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood was inspired to paint what is now known as the American Gothic House in Eldon, along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house", it depicts a farmer standing beside his daughter – mistakenly assumed to be his wife. The figures were modeled by their dentist Dr. Byron McKeeby; the woman is dressed in a colonial print apron evoking 20th-century rural Americana, the man is holding a pitchfork. The plants on the porch of the house are mother-in-law's tongue and beefsteak begonia, which are the same as the plants in Wood's 1929 portrait of his mother Woman with Plants. American Gothic is one of the most familiar images in 20th-century American art and has been parodied in American popular culture. In 2016–17, the painting was displayed in Paris at the Musée de l'Orangerie and in London at the Royal Academy of Arts in its first showings outside the United States. In August 1930, Grant Wood, an American painter with European training, was driven around Eldon, Iowa, by a young painter from Eldon, John Sharp.

Looking for inspiration, Wood noticed the Dibble House, a small white house built in the Carpenter Gothic architectural style. Sharp's brother suggested in 1973 that it was on this drive that Wood first sketched the house on the back of an envelope. Wood's earliest biographer, Darrell Garwood, noted that Wood "thought it a form of borrowed pretentiousness, a structural absurdity, to put a Gothic-style window in such a flimsy frame house". At the time, Wood classified it as one of the "cardboardy frame houses on Iowa farms" and considered it "very paintable". After obtaining permission from Selma Jones-Johnston and her family, the house's owners, Wood made a sketch the next day in oil on paperboard from the house's front yard; this sketch displayed a steeper roof and a longer window with a more pronounced ogive than on the actual house, features which adorned the final work. Wood decided to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house", he recruited his sister Nan to be the model for the daughter, dressing her in a colonial print apron mimicking 20th-century rural Americana.

The model for the father was Dr. Byron McKeeby from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Nan told people that her brother had envisioned the couple as father and daughter, not husband and wife, which Wood himself confirmed in his letter to a Mrs. Nellie Sudduth in 1941. Elements of the painting stress the vertical, associated with Gothic architecture; the three-pronged pitchfork is echoed in the stitching of the man's overalls, the Gothic window of the house, the structure of the man's face. However, Wood did not add figures to his sketch, he would not return to Eldon again before his death in 1942, although he did request a photograph of the home to complete his painting. Wood entered the painting in a competition at the Art Institute of Chicago. One judge deemed it a "comic valentine", but a museum patron persuaded the jury to award the painting the bronze medal and $300 cash prize; the patron persuaded the Art Institute to buy the painting, it remains part of the museum's collection. The image soon began to be reproduced in newspapers, first by the Chicago Evening Post and in New York, Kansas City, Indianapolis.

However, Wood received a backlash when the image appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Iowans were furious at their depiction as "pinched, grim-faced, puritanical Bible-thumpers". Wood protested that he had not painted a caricature of Iowans but a depiction of his appreciation, stating "I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa."Art critics who had favorable opinions about the painting, such as Gertrude Stein and Christopher Morley assumed the painting was meant to be a satire of rural small-town life. It was thus seen as part of the trend toward critical depictions of rural America, along the lines of Sherwood Anderson's 1919 Winesburg, Sinclair Lewis's 1920 Main Street, Carl Van Vechten's 1924 The Tattooed Countess in literature. However, with the onset of the Great Depression, the painting came to be seen as a depiction of steadfast American pioneer spirit. Wood assisted this transition by renouncing his Bohemian youth in Paris and grouping himself with populist Midwestern painters, such as John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton, who revolted against the dominance of East Coast art circles.

Wood was quoted in this period as stating, "All the good ideas I've had came to me while I was milking a cow."In 2010, art historian R. Tripp Evans of Wheaton College interpreted it as an "old-fashioned mourning portrait... Tellingly, the curtains hanging in the windows of the house, both upstairs and down, are pulled closed in the middle of the day, a mourning custom in Victorian America; the woman wears a black dress beneath her apron, glances away as if holding back tears. One imagines she is grieving for the man beside her". Wood had been only 10 when his father had died and had lived for a decade "above a garage reserved for hearses", so death was on his mind. In 2019, culture writer Kelly Grovier described it as a portrait of Pluto and Proserpina, the Roman gods of the underworld; the Depression-era understanding of the painting as a depiction of an authentically American scene prompted the first well-known parody, a 1942 photo by Gordon Parks of cleaning woman Ella Watson, shot in Washington, D.

C. American Gothic is a parodied image, it has been lampooned in Broadway shows such as The Music Man, movies such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, television shows such

Bhakton Ki Bhakti Mein Shakti is an Indian drama television series which ran for one season on Life OK in 2016. Saurabh Raj Jain played the lead role. Saurabh Raj Jain as Host Mouli Ganguly as Shivangi Mazher Sayed as Inspector Mannu Neetha Shetty as Rishika Sachin Shroff as Rishika's Husband Vaishnavi Dhanraj as Aditi Vishal Watwani as Tejas Kajal Jain as Maithili Manoj Chandila as Girish Vaishali Takkar as Shraddha Debina Bonnerjee as Inspector Shyama Ganguly Nayan Bhatt as Kasturi Gauri Singh as Head of News Channel Shahab Khan as Mr. Sethi Shweta Gautam as Raj's Elder Brother's Wife Bhavesh Balchandani as Mannu Fahad Ali as Sagar Mehul Kajaria as Anil

Escape and radiate coevolution is a multistep process that hypothesizes that an organism under constraints from other organisms will develop new defenses, allowing it to "escape" and "radiate" into differing species. After a novel defense has been acquired, an organism is able to escape predation and multiply into new species because of relaxed selective pressure. There are many possible mechanisms available varying between different types of organisms, however they must be novel in order for escape to allow for radiation; this theory applies to predator-prey associations, but is most applied to plant-herbivore associations. This form of coevolution can be complex but is essential to understanding the vast biological diversity among organisms today. Out of the many forms of coevolution and radiate is most responsible for providing the most diversity; this is due to the nature of the "evolutionary arms race" and the continuous cycle of counter adaptations. It is a new field of study and is gaining credibility.

To date, there has not been a formal study published for escape and radiate coevolution. This theory originated in a paper by Ehrlich and Raven, 1964, "Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution", it laid the foundations of the concept. However, the term "escape and radiate" was not coined until Thompson's 1989 "Concepts of Coevolution"; the theory has not yet been analyzed, however, as since its origins it has grown in importance among evolutionary biologists and botanists. In order for an organism to "escape", radiate into varying species it needs a mechanism to escape; these defense mechanisms vary and differ for different types of organisms. Plants use chemical defenses in the form of secondary allelochemicals; these allelochemicals inhibit the growth and health of herbivores, allowing plants to escape. An example of a plant allelochemical are alkaloids. Other forms of plant defense include mechanical defenses such as thigmonasty movements which have the plant leaves close in response to tactile stimulation.

Indirect mechanisms plant include shedding of plant leaves so less leaves are available which deters herbivores, growth in locations in that are difficult to reach, mimicry. For organisms other than plants, examples of defense mechanisms allowing for escape include camouflage, heightened senses and physical capabilities, defensive behaviors such as feigning death. An example of an organism using one of these defense mechanisms is the granular poison frog which defends itself through aposematism, it is important to understand that in order for escape and radiate coevolution to occur, it is necessary that the developed defense is novel rather than established. Induced defense stemming from adaptive phenotypic plasticity may help a plant defend itself against multiple enemies. Phenotypic plasticity occurs when an organism undergoes an environmental change forcing a change altering its behavior, etc; these induced defenses allow for an organism to escape. Radiation is the evolutionary process of diversification of a single species into multiple forms.

It includes the physiological and ecological diversity within a multiplying lineage. There are many types of radiation including adaptive and discordant radiation however escape and radiate coevolution does not always follow those specific types; this leads to the question, why does escape allow for radiation? Once a novel defense has been acquired, the attacking organism which had evolved adaptations that allowed it to predate is now up against a new defense that it has not yet been evolved to encounter; this gives the defending organism the advantage, therefore time to multiply unopposed by the attacking organism. This leads to the physiological and ecological diversity within the multiplying lineage, hence radiation. A full study analyzing the effects of escape and radiate coevolution has not yet been completed which hinders knowing how applicable this form of coevolution could be to other areas of study, or global concerns, only hypotheses of its effects can be made. Improved agriculture, biological diversity, epidemiology are just some of the areas that could be helped through the study of coevolution and its specific hypotheses such as escape and radiate coevolution.

A theory as to why we see such vast biological diversity today may be because of escape and radiate coevolution. After the organism escapes, it radiates into multiple species, spreads geographically. Evidence of escape and radiate coevolution can be seen through the starburst effect in plant and herbivore clades; when analyzing clades of predator-prey associations, although it varies, the starburst effect is a good indicator that escape and radiate coevolution may be occurring. This cycle must come to an end because adaptations that entail costs that at some point outweigh their benefits. Escape and radiate coevolution may support parallel cladogenesis, wherein plant and herbivore phylogenies might match with ancestral insects exploiting ancestral plants; this is significant because it allows researchers to hypothesize about the relationships between ancestral organisms. There have not yet been any known examples involving escape and radiate coevolution being used for hypothesizing ancestral relationships.

Many times the organism that has "escaped" continuously undergoes selective pressure because the predator it has escaped from evolves to create another adaptation in response, causing the process to continue. These "offen