Amy Sherald's 'Hangman' Defies Her Signature Style in Whitney Retrospective

Art historian Allison Young examines Amy Sherald's 2007 painting 'Hangman', currently on view in the artist's retrospective 'American Sublime' at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, through 10 August. Unlike Sherald's signature frontal portraits with vibrant flat backgrounds, 'Hangman' depicts a male figure suspended midair in side view, wearing a modest white undershirt. The painting uses semitransparent purple columns and a crackling orange blaze to evoke lynching, though no noose or gallows is shown. Sherald conceived it as a 'reverse lynching', with the figure gracefully lifted in an analogy to the Ascension in Christian art. The work references children's game 'hangman' and its violent history, including Klan-themed 'White Cap Parties'. Young connects the painting to Sherald's 2020 Vanity Fair portrait of Breonna Taylor, noting both works address racial violence and Black joy. After 'Hangman', Sherald abandoned overt references to racial violence in her practice.