Executed in 1976, The American Indian (Russell Means) offers a rare and prescient synthesis of Andy Warhol’s unparalleled devotion to popular culture and his adoption of germane political imagery in his artistic output. Produced with Warhol’s semi-mechanical silkscreen technique, the present work embodies the apex of the artist’s signature style. Conceived of as a project with West Coast dealer and Ace Gallery owner Doug Chrismas, the series to which the present work belongs contains 38 paintings and 23 drawings. At 84 by 70 inches, The American Indian (Russell Means) is one of only twelve of the largest format paintings, which Warhol granted Chrismas the exclusive rights to sell for the first ten years after the series’s inception. Other examples of this size reside in important collections, such as the Denver Art Museum, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, and the Dayton Art Institute. Acquired shortly following its execution, the present work has remained in the same private collection since it was purchased from Chrismas. Impressive in its monumentality and rich, expressive and painterly surface, the present example is among the very best from the series, notable for the clarity, precise alignment of its screen, and variegated, vibrant color palette.

The subject of the series, Russell Means, a member of the Lakota tribe, led the American Indian Movement during the highly publicized, seventy-one-day siege of the town of Wounded Knee, the infamous site of an 1890 massacre of the Lakota by a U.S. Cavalry regiment, as protest of the U.S. government’s alleged tribal mistreatment. A focus of intense media scrutiny, the siege garnered significant attention in Hollywood, resulting in avid celebrity activism. Marlon Brando famously refused to accept his 1973 “Best Actor” Oscar for The Godfather because of Hollywood’s role in degrading the Indian and making mockery of his character. Despite its thematic continuity, The American Indian (Russell Means)’s loosely painted surface illustrates a shift in Warhol’s practice in the 1970s.

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 color 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.

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, who was 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.

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 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.

The American Indian (Russell Means) simultaneously proffers Means as a cultural icon and essentializes him, flattening his individuality to the character type of an “American Indian.” Though he positions his body three-quarters away from viewers, Means faces them straight-on: he turns his head to meet their gaze. There is a solemnity to his expression; his right eyebrow raised slightly, as if to acknowledge viewers’ presence, but he bears no hint of a smile. His unflinching stature carries a gravitas that bespeaks his authority within his community, and he consumes the entirety of the canvas, demanding viewers’ full attention. Cropping the portrait to Means’ bust—and therefore adopting the legacy of bust-portraiture, a form typically reserved for Western history’s great leaders—elevates Means’ status for Western viewers. Doing so also lends a sense of celebrity to Means’ image, for it places the portrait in line with Warhol’s many portraits of celebrities and cultural icons, nearly all of whom he removes from their context and crops into a high-keyed, flat backdrop. Warhol emphasizes Means’ dominant facial features: his defined bone structure and his piercing, focused gaze. Unlike many of his other series of portraits—such as Marilyn, Mao, and Ladies and Gentlemen—which he decorates with makeup-like face paints, Warhol renders Means’ face with a monochromatic wash of color. Given the widespread trope of face paint in stereotypes of Native Americans, Warhol’s refrain from stylizing Means’ face with various tones of paint is particularly curious. Warhol uses Means’ accoutrements as an arena for color play instead, coating his subject’s hair with bright blue pigment, swashing his jacket with thick strokes of cadmium yellow, dousing his shirt and collar in turmeric and basil hues, and striping his jacket’s edges with dashes of bubblegum pink.

ANDY WARHOL
The American Indian (Russell Means), 1976

With its dual significance, an emblem of a contemporary sociopolitical crisis and an American archetype with far-reaching cultural resonance, The American Indian (Russell Means) makes manifest Warhol’s profound contribution to the history of art. The series’ conceptual grounding in seriality and repetition roots it to the core of Warhol’s oeuvre; with an ethos of mass-production, The American Indian (Russell Means) helps cement Warhol’s status as the most powerful force behind American art’s turn from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art.

The American Indian (Russell Means), 1976

Sotheby’s New-York: 16 May 2019
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 6,300,000

(#20) ANDY WARHOL | The American Indian (Russell Means)

ANDY WARHOL
The American Indian (Russell Means), 1976
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
84.2 x 70 inches (214 x 177.8 cm)

American Indian (Russell Means), 1976

Christie’s London: 21 June 2006
Estimated: GBP 700,000 – 1,000,000
GBP 1,464,000

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) , American Indian (Russell Means) | Christie’s

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The American Indian (50×42)

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The American Indian (Russell Means), 1977

Sotheby’s New-York: 18 November 2025
Estimated: USD 2,o00,000 – 3,000,000
USD 4,076,000

The American Indian (Russell Means) | The Now & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)
The American Indian (Russell Means), 1977
Scrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
50 1/8 x 42 inches (127 x 106.7 cm)

Residing at the intersection of popular culture, political activism, and celebrity, Portrait of an American Indian (Russell Means) is an exemplar of Andy Warhol’s distillation of diverse ideas into an iconic, enduring image. The image in question—a monumental headshot of Lakota leader and activist Russell Means—stares unflinchingly out at the viewer, clad in the silkscreen ink and bold swathes of color that mark Warhol’s signature style. In a venture with West Coast dealer and Ace Gallery owner Doug Chrismas, Warhol produced a limited suite series entitled, The American Indian, of which many are now held in prominent institutional collections including The National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C.; Hamburger Kunsthalle; and The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, among others. The present example, executed in late 1976, is among the very best from the series, possessing exceptional clarity in both line and color. Alongside its stunning visual contrasts, the portrait stirs up the contrasting perceptions of its subject: at once proud individual and general archetype, Portrait of an American Indian (Russell Means) embodies the “ironies” and “powers” that define Warhol’s most rigorous examinations of contemporary culture—as seen through the lens of his art. (Tony Berlant cited in: Neil Printz and Sally Kind-Nero, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne, Vol. 4: Paintings and Sculpture late 1974-76, New York 2014, p. 492)

Polaroid studies of Russell Means, 1976. Art © 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Russell Means was born into the Lakota Oglala tribe in 1939, eventually rising up the ranks to assume leadership of the American Indian Movement (AIM). By the time he first encountered Warhol in 1976, Means had already established a public presence of his own. In February of 1973, he led the American Indian Movement during the highly-publicized, seventy-one day siege of the town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation—the infamous site of an 1890 massacre of the Lakota by a U.S. Cavalry regiment—in protest against the mistreatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government. The siege garnered significant attention in Hollywood and beyond, with Means assuming the role of public activist, and increasingly, of celebrity himself. Meanwhile, Warhol had separately devised the idea of a series centering the American Indian as its subject. After consulting Indian nations in California and Canada in search of an individual that “best personified the contemporary Indian,” Warhol learned of Russell Means. Starting with a cultural archetype and narrowing his focus to the individual, Andy Warhol invited Means to his New York studio in July 1976 to be photographed. The 82 Polaroid photographs Warhol took of Means that day became the foundation for The American Indian series.

Andy Warhol at the opening of The American Indian Series at ACE Gallery, Paris 1976. Photo © Courtesy of Ace Gallery. Art © 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Art / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In the series, Means is depicted wearing a calico print shirt, four beaded necklaces and a bone hairpipe choker, with his hair braided with brown leather wraps. His manner of dress was not particularly specific to his Lakota ancestry, but rather “contemporary and generically Indian in a sense, having come into fashion during the 1970s as an expression of American Indian pride.” Means’ typified manner of dress, refracted through Warhol’s characteristic use of seriality, contrasts with Means’ role as an individual community activist. Taken together, these factors form a complex identity for the “contemporary Indian,” who is both undeniably individual and apparently generic; as Rainer Michael Mason remarks on Warhol’s execution of the series, “The master of indifference, with a sureness that is less somnambulistic than it appears, has once more adopted a theme that is simultaneously captivating and banal. The Indian is a conventional accessory of the American scene, for the same reason as its counterpart, the cowboy, or as Coca-Cola, the electric chair, the movie star. The title of the series, moreover, ‘The American Indian’ takes this anonymous and communal dimension into account. At the same time, however, the Indian is the face of a real political problem, of a singular minority, and beyond that of all the American minorities.”

In each portrait, Warhol’s signature style accentuates the complex and commanding presence of Means himself. Defined by vivid, variegated coloration and high-contrast edges, Warhol’s technique lends each portrait a psychic intensity befitting the personal authority of its subject. The present work, Portrait of an American Indian (Russell Means), is a particularly impressive example. Set against a swath of brilliant golden yellow, Means’ face and adornments vibrate in a rich tapestry of lilac, periwinkle, brick red, and cyan. Each bright color is anchored by Means’ silkscreened image, which lends an inky depth to his braided hair, strong bone structure, and piercing gaze. Warhol characteristically built up his paint surfaces in superimposed layers, then would score the layered wet paint with his fingers to create optical effects: this technique is evident in the background, where Warhol pushes yellow paint to evoke scattering sunlight. In contrast to Warhol’s prior portraits of celebrities and cultural figures, which utilize a flat, graphic backdrop, Means’ portrait retains a potent sense of atmosphere: the golden yellow, indigo, and tan colored backdrop undeniably echoes the sky and the desert of the American West.

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1983. Private Collection. Sold at Sotheby’s New York in November 2014 for $36 million.
Art © 2025 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Executed in the years following Russell Means’ siege of Wounded Knee, The American Indian series naturally assumes a political dimension. The lush setting of the American West becomes simultaneously associated with Hollywood myth-making, a force that often contributes to the stereotyping of the Indian and his character. This stereotype is often characterized by face paint, an image that seems commonplace, but in reality possesses a specific cultural meaning: as Means explains, face paint “was put on only those willing to die,” so those who wore such paint “were all the soldiers, the defenders inside Wounded Knee.” In this context, Warhol’s use of colored paint to portray Means’ face throughout the series is especially notable. Yet the image as a whole still retains a sense of ambiguity: oscillating between dignified individual and flattened archetype, and playing upon the language of media culture while presenting a sincere artistic representation.

Russell Means and Kent Frizzell shaking hands, 1973. Image © Getty Images / Bettman

Encompassing the dual definitions of individual and archetype, Portrait of an American Indian (Russell Means) embodies Warhol’s most daring explorations of the seriality and portraiture which define the core of his oeuvre. The work, alongside the remainder of The American Indian series, is impressive in scale and intellectually rigorous in theme, revealing Warhol’s incisive and endless fascination with the cultural forces that define the American image.

The American Indian (Russell Means), 1977

Sotheby’ Paris: 25 October 2022
Estimated: EUR 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
EUR 2,697,000

The American Indian (Russell Means) | Collection Waller, l’Art en mouvements, Part I | 2022 | Sotheby’s

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
The American Indian (Russell Means), 1977
Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas
50 ⅜ x 42 ⅛ inches (128×107 cm)
Signed and dated 1977 on the overlap

The American Indian (Russell Means), 1976

Sotheby’s New-York: 19 May 2022
Estimated: USD 3,000,000 – 4,000,000
USD 6,184,400

The American Indian (Russell Means) | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s

The American Indian (Russell Means), 1976

Sotheby’s New-York: 18 November 2016
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 2,412,500

(#139) Andy Warhol

ANDY WARHOL
The American Indian (Russell Means), 1976
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
50×42 inches (127 x 106.7 cm)