Giddap!

Portfolio TitleSelections from the Atlanta Period

Artist Hale Woodruff (American, 1900 - 1980)

Printer Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop (American)

Dateca. 1935; printed 1996

MediumLinocut on lana royal bright white thai mulberry chin colle paper

DimensionsImage: 12 × 8 15/16 inches (30.48 × 22.7 cm)
Sheet: 18 13/16 × 14 7/8 inches (47.78 × 37.78 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: acquired through the generosity of The Print Society in honor of Dr. Leo Goertz and gift of Auldlyn Higgins Williams and E.T. Williams Jr. of Sag Harbor, N.Y.

Object number2018.4.3

SignedA blind stamp of the Blackburn emblem at the bottom left edge. The artist's blind stamp at the bottom right edge, "(C) Hale Woodruff"

Inscribed"13/75" in pencil at the bottom left corner

On View

Not on view

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionThe vertically oriented black-and-white print Giddap!, depicts at its center a black man wearing a light shirt open at the chest and dark pants and with his arms bound behind him and a noose around his neck. The man is surrounded by seven leering men and women—old and young and of various classes, many of whom wear hats and bonnets—who shake their fists and point their guns at him. The scene takes place in the seclusion of a heavily wooded setting. The black man stands on the floor of a wagon driven by an eighth man who raises switch he is about to use to whip the mule that will cause the wagon to race forward and result in the black man’s hanging.Gallery Label

Gallery Label

As an African American man working in the South, Hale Woodruff used his art to fight social injustice. In 1935, Giddap! and By Parties Unknown were featured in one of the nation’s first exhibitions to discuss racially motivated violence, An Art Commentary on Lynching. It was held in New York City and organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In Giddap! leering white men and women shake fists and wave guns as they surround a bound black man with a noose around his neck in a wooded setting.

Provenance

Auldlyn Higgins Williams and E.T. Williams, Jr., Sag Harbor, NY, 1996–2018;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 2018.

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