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Decision is the key. It is your greatest power. Resourcefulness makes the difference. Strive to understand your target, map and fuel. You need certainty, uncertainty, significance, connection and love. We all achieve this to some degree. These are the needs of personality. This is accomplishment. It is a science. To grow and contribute beyond ourselves, these are the needs of our spirit. This is fulfillment. It is an art.

In 1930, Grant Wood, an American painter with European training, noticed a small white house built in the Carpenter Gothic architectural style in Eldon, Iowa. Wood decided to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house."[3] He recruited his sister Nan (1900-1990) to model the woman, dressing her in a colonial print apron mimicking 19th century Americana. The man is modeled on Wood's dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby (1867-1950) from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The three-pronged hay fork is echoed in the stitching of the man's overalls, the Gothic window of the house and the structure of the man's face. Each element was painted separately; the models sat separately and never stood in front of the house.


American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood from 1930. Its inspiration came from a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival style with a distinctive upper window[1] and a decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house."[2] The painting shows a farmer standing beside a woman whose identity remains ambiguous; she may either be his spinster daughter, as explained by the artist's sister, or the farmer's wife. The figures were modeled by the artist's dentist and sister. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron mimicking 19th century Americana and the couple are in the traditional roles of men and women, the man's pitchfork symbolizing hard labor, and the flowers over the woman's right shoulder suggesting domesticity.




Wood entered the painting in a competition at the Art Institute of Chicago. The judges deemed it a "comic valentine," but a museum patron convinced them to award the painting the bronze medal and $300 cash prize. The patron also convinced the Art Institute to buy the painting, which remains there today.[4] The image soon began to be reproduced in newspapers, first by the Chicago Evening Post and then in New York, Boston, Kansas City, and Indianapolis. However, Wood received a backlash when the image finally appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Iowans were furious at their depiction as "pinched, grim-faced, puritanical Bible-thumpers"[5]. One farmwife threatened to bite Wood's ear off. Wood protested that he had not painted a caricature of Iowans but a depiction of Americans. Nan, apparently embarrassed at being depicted as the wife of someone twice her age, began telling people that the painting was of a man and his daughter, a point on which Wood remained silent.[3]

American Gothic (1942) by Gordon Parks was the first prominent parody of the painting.

Art critics who had favorable opinions about the painting, such as Gertrude Stein and Christopher Morley, also assumed the painting was meant to be a satire of rural small-town life. It was thus seen as part of the trend toward increasingly critical depictions of rural America, along the lines of Sherwood Anderson's 1919 Winesburg, Ohio, Sinclair Lewis's 1920 Main Street, and Carl Van Vechten's The Tattooed Countess in literature.[3]

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 ever had came to me while I was milking a cow."[3] This 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.[3]

danishkaren26@gmail.com

http://karen26.mono.net/




This is what makes me think that “Karen’s” story is pure fiction:

1. “Karen” doesn’t remember the father’s name, appearance or nationality. This doesn’t correspond well with basic knowledge about human memory: Unusual events are often stored more efficiently in memory than ordinary events.

“Karen” doesn’t present herself as promiscuous, thus we must assume that meeting a foreign man and bringing him home with her is not something she experiences regularly. Therefore it seems unlikely that she wouldn’t have remembered what this person looked like or where he was from – or what he was called, if they ever did exchange names.

If they had sex on the harbor without talking much, perhaps there would be no names exchanged. But they apparently talked about such clichés as “hygge”, which points towards a somewhat formal setting. In such a setting, it is more likely that they had exchanged names than the opposite. Furthermore, they apparently walked home together, which made it even more likely that they exchanged names. Since foreign names are often more unusual to you than names in your own language, it is more likely that she would have remembered his name, than forgotten it.

If this was a viral campaign, a name on the father – or even a description or a nationality, would have limited the amount of people who were potentially touched by it. Therefore this supports the theory that this is fiction.

2. “Karen” doesn’t look emotionally affected by the situation. Her face and eye movements reflect no inner conflict or emotions.

For example, “Karen” tries to give an impression of shamefulness, when she mentions her not remembering much from that evening. But it never affects her facial expressions, which remain the same no matter what she says. If this was a somewhat improvised presentation, I would have expected her to move her eyes a lot more around as se searched for words or became embarrassed. This doesn’t happen – she looks into the camera, quite friendly and secure all the time.

3. Her website is under-presenting her, compared to Danes in general.


In some other countries, it is impolite to ask people about their profession, but in Denmark, our occupation is a key component in our identity. It is unlikely that a real Danish girl would not reveal her occupation as one of the first things, when she made a webpage about herself. “Living alone with my son” is less likely to be the tag line of a young Danish woman’s personal website. A Danish woman would define herself as much more that a mother.

4. The “hygge” discussion is a cliché, more popular in Denmark than abroad

The only people I have EVER heard tell me that “hygge” (coziness) is something so uniquely Danish and that it can’t be translated have been Danish. It is a cliché that is mainly used in relation to tourism and not a fact that is well known outside Denmark. Thus, it is more likely that this has been fabricated than real.

5. Do the pictures and video show a mother and her child?

The pictures are quite elaborated, though – different settings and clothes – and some less flattering. This could actually be her own kid – but some (vague) signs suggest that it isn’t.

In the picture of Karen and her kid reading a book (above), she covers the pages of the book with her hand. That is not a usual situation, if a mother is reading or looking at pictures with her child. It is more likely a thing you do when you want to prevent the kid from moving the book until the picture has been taken.

In the next picture of Karen almost kissing the kid (right), the child looks a bit surprised by “Karen’s” appearing so close. This may off course be a coincidence, but it could also be a sign that this woman’s face is not familiar – perhaps because she is not the mother of that child.

In the video, the child also looks quite curious at both the room and “Karen”, which suggests that neither are familiar sights to him. If you follow the child’s eyes – he may actually be looking at someone to our left of the camera, but that could actually be anything – and another person is not required to operate the camera.

An why doesn’t “Karen” show any pictures of her and little August where he is an infant? The kid doesn’t seem to age much on the pictures shown on the site, where it is always summertime ;o)

Conclusion

This is with almost certainty a fictional video and it is most likely a part of a marketing campagin.

My guess is that she is an actress...

And so here is Ditte Arnth.