Cowboys and Indians: General Custer, 1986, screenprint on Lenox museum
board, ed. 55 of 250, 36 x 36”. Collection Booth Western Art Museum.included in his own works of art. Hopkins describes the selection
of images for Cowboys and Indians: “Some images selected for
inclusion in this portfolio came from 19th-century photographs
depicting recognizable and iconic figures in Western and Native
American history. Three images were based on Native American
artifacts, dating from the same era, housed at the Museum of the
American Indian where Warhol photographed them in 1985.
Once Warhol selected a source photograph, he attempted to
make it his own by cropping the image to fit his square picture
plane, and with his printer experimented with a range of possible
color combinations. Fourteen images were subjected to such
experimentation.”
His screenprint of Geronimo is taken from A. Frank Randall’s
circa 1887 photograph of the Apache warrior kneeling and
holding his rifle with a fierce and resistant expression. Warhol
extracted the face and acknowledged his appropriation of the
image from a printed source by including the Ben-Day dots of the
photoengraving process.
In 1911, the sculptor James Earle Fraser was commissioned to
create a design to replace the country’s Liberty Head nickel. He
wrote, “I felt I wanted to do something totally American—a coin
that could not be mistaken for any other country’s coin. It occurred
to me that the buffalo, as part of our western background, was 100
percent American, and that our North American Indian fitted
into the picture perfectly.” The first coins were issued in 1913.
In an ironic nod to the fate of the American Indian, Warhol has
Lonesome Cowboys, 1968, 16mm color film, sound, 109 minutes. Film still courtesy of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, 1997.4.75.