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Lot Essay
In 1976, Andy Warhol took a photograph of the famous Lakota activist, Russell Means. Warhol waved his Pop wand over the resultant image, converting it into his own unique visual style and thereby admitting Means to his ever-swelling pantheon of Twentieth Century themes and characters. Executed that year, The American Indian shows this Pop apotheosis Means is shown against a lurid green background; his chest is pink, and his face is shown in a colour all too easily associable with the word 'redskin'. Means appears as the archetypal American Indian not in an ideal sense, but instead in the sense of the American imagination and popular culture-- he has been converted into a Hollywood Indian, into a stereotype.
But this is a trap. At first glance, The American Indian appears to be less a portrait than a picture of a facet of American culture, another icon pillaged from the vast iconographic quagmire of the capitalist world. Warhol has lulled us into a false sense of security by presenting us with an image that could be straight from the cover of a pulp Western novel or a cheap film, yet by showing Means-- a well-known activist-- in this way, he forces us as viewers to question our reactions to the image, our associations with the theme. Warhol points to our own reflexes, highlighting the rapidity with which we pigeonhole this image. This is a reaction made all the more apparent because of the supposedly superficial gloss of Warhol's own art. For while he has celebrated many aspects of American culture from Coca Cola to Campbell's Soup to the dollar bill via Elvis, Marilyn and Elizabeth Taylor, there has always been a darker undercurrent that disrupts our presumptions, forcing us to reappraise the world of images that we take for granted. Despite his own denials, there is a weight to Warhol's work that lurks, hidden, underneath the colourful sheen of the surface. Like quicksand, once we are beyond that surface we are engulfed in complexity and paradox. Warhol deliberately tricks the viewer into seeing The American Indian as a stock character, and then plays on the awkward feelings that a little context provokes.
In real life, Russell Means is a prominent activist fighting for Native American rights, not least those of his own Lakota tribe. It was only in 1991 that he became an actor, starring in Michael Mann's adaptation of Fennimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. There is an unavoidable whiff of the mischievous in Warhol's lurid portrayal, with Means is presented as a stock character in his native finery. The persona of the activist and lecturer is bulldozed out of the way by Warhol's style, his manner of transforming an image, the bright Pop palette. Instead, The American Indian appears superficial, a very Pop Indian, a cliché from the same world that Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger inhabit. Warhol has managed to turn Russell Means into the very thing that he protests against. Yet Warhol creates these associations in order to highlight them.
Even today, the image of the American Indian from the Wild West is endemic, and was much more so in the 1970s when The American Indian was created. Be it in the form of the savage of the early Westerns or the mystical, shamanic presence of the later ones, the Native American is in a sense a construct of the American imagination, a fiction that all too conveniently glosses over the rights and heritages of hundreds of aggrieved peoples. The stereotype of the American Indian is, even when it is meant to be ennobling, a reductive construct. This is a product of the European newcomer, the invader, and no-one is more aware of it than Means himself. In a speech he made only a few years after The American Indian was created, he pointed out that this construct pervades the American cultural consciousness even at a linguistic level:
'You notice I use the term American Indian rather than Native American or Native indigenous people or Amerindian when referring to my people. There has been some controversy about such terms, and frankly, at this point, I find it absurd. Primarily it seems that American Indian is being rejected as European in origin-- which is true. But all the above terms are European in origin; the only non-European way is to speak of Lakota-- or, more precisely, of Oglala, Brule, etc.-- and of the Dineh, the Miccousukee, and all the rest of the several hundred correct tribal names' (Means, Black Hills International Survival Gathering, 1980).
In The American Indian, Warhol forces the viewer to navigate the ambiguities of this construct, of this heritage, of the history and presumptions and disinformation and injustice all of which are associated with the past-- and even present-- of the native Americans.
The Wild West remains one of the richest seams of story and history in the United States, a unique arena in which epic struggles between men and with the elements were fought out. It is for this reason that the cowboys and Indians became so central to American culture. These were new and original characters, unique to the United States, new archetypes at the centre of American myth, and this is reflected in the penny dreadfuls, the novels, the films, the history, the tourism... It is therefore only natural that the Wild West appeared many times one way or another in Warhol's oeuvre. Be it in his pictures of Elvis, based on publicity stills for the film Flaming Star, or in Warhol's own film, Lonesome Cowboys, the West was far too rich a source of images and themes to be left alone by this scavenger Pop artist. However, The American Indian is one of the only times that Warhol looked at the other side of the coin, at the Indian not the cowboy. Where in other places he used these subjects as themes in which to undermine the machismo traditionally associated with the West (kissing cowboys, camp Elvis), The American Indian reveals the usually inscrutable and apolitical artist producing an image in which the tension that arises from the discrepancies between content and context is wholly relevant, political and deeply human.
But this is a trap. At first glance, The American Indian appears to be less a portrait than a picture of a facet of American culture, another icon pillaged from the vast iconographic quagmire of the capitalist world. Warhol has lulled us into a false sense of security by presenting us with an image that could be straight from the cover of a pulp Western novel or a cheap film, yet by showing Means-- a well-known activist-- in this way, he forces us as viewers to question our reactions to the image, our associations with the theme. Warhol points to our own reflexes, highlighting the rapidity with which we pigeonhole this image. This is a reaction made all the more apparent because of the supposedly superficial gloss of Warhol's own art. For while he has celebrated many aspects of American culture from Coca Cola to Campbell's Soup to the dollar bill via Elvis, Marilyn and Elizabeth Taylor, there has always been a darker undercurrent that disrupts our presumptions, forcing us to reappraise the world of images that we take for granted. Despite his own denials, there is a weight to Warhol's work that lurks, hidden, underneath the colourful sheen of the surface. Like quicksand, once we are beyond that surface we are engulfed in complexity and paradox. Warhol deliberately tricks the viewer into seeing The American Indian as a stock character, and then plays on the awkward feelings that a little context provokes.
In real life, Russell Means is a prominent activist fighting for Native American rights, not least those of his own Lakota tribe. It was only in 1991 that he became an actor, starring in Michael Mann's adaptation of Fennimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. There is an unavoidable whiff of the mischievous in Warhol's lurid portrayal, with Means is presented as a stock character in his native finery. The persona of the activist and lecturer is bulldozed out of the way by Warhol's style, his manner of transforming an image, the bright Pop palette. Instead, The American Indian appears superficial, a very Pop Indian, a cliché from the same world that Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger inhabit. Warhol has managed to turn Russell Means into the very thing that he protests against. Yet Warhol creates these associations in order to highlight them.
Even today, the image of the American Indian from the Wild West is endemic, and was much more so in the 1970s when The American Indian was created. Be it in the form of the savage of the early Westerns or the mystical, shamanic presence of the later ones, the Native American is in a sense a construct of the American imagination, a fiction that all too conveniently glosses over the rights and heritages of hundreds of aggrieved peoples. The stereotype of the American Indian is, even when it is meant to be ennobling, a reductive construct. This is a product of the European newcomer, the invader, and no-one is more aware of it than Means himself. In a speech he made only a few years after The American Indian was created, he pointed out that this construct pervades the American cultural consciousness even at a linguistic level:
'You notice I use the term American Indian rather than Native American or Native indigenous people or Amerindian when referring to my people. There has been some controversy about such terms, and frankly, at this point, I find it absurd. Primarily it seems that American Indian is being rejected as European in origin-- which is true. But all the above terms are European in origin; the only non-European way is to speak of Lakota-- or, more precisely, of Oglala, Brule, etc.-- and of the Dineh, the Miccousukee, and all the rest of the several hundred correct tribal names' (Means, Black Hills International Survival Gathering, 1980).
In The American Indian, Warhol forces the viewer to navigate the ambiguities of this construct, of this heritage, of the history and presumptions and disinformation and injustice all of which are associated with the past-- and even present-- of the native Americans.
The Wild West remains one of the richest seams of story and history in the United States, a unique arena in which epic struggles between men and with the elements were fought out. It is for this reason that the cowboys and Indians became so central to American culture. These were new and original characters, unique to the United States, new archetypes at the centre of American myth, and this is reflected in the penny dreadfuls, the novels, the films, the history, the tourism... It is therefore only natural that the Wild West appeared many times one way or another in Warhol's oeuvre. Be it in his pictures of Elvis, based on publicity stills for the film Flaming Star, or in Warhol's own film, Lonesome Cowboys, the West was far too rich a source of images and themes to be left alone by this scavenger Pop artist. However, The American Indian is one of the only times that Warhol looked at the other side of the coin, at the Indian not the cowboy. Where in other places he used these subjects as themes in which to undermine the machismo traditionally associated with the West (kissing cowboys, camp Elvis), The American Indian reveals the usually inscrutable and apolitical artist producing an image in which the tension that arises from the discrepancies between content and context is wholly relevant, political and deeply human.