Overheard at the Gallery

I was standing in the Art Institute the other day. Near where American Gothic hangs. You've seen it:


A docent was lecturing a group of schoolchildren about the work. She started off with, "This is a very sexist painting."

I had put this incident out of my mind, but today I was looking at Amazon reviews of Roger Kimball's book, The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art.

The first reviewer said: "Kimball skewers the current trend of viewing all Western art (as well as Western literature) solely through the prism of sex, gender, and class. What results is a ludicrous but scary disfigurement of Western art."

Of course I flashed back to the docent
And her gender-colored prism.
One should be careful approaching
Art through the shades of an Ism.