Cowboys and Indians (Mother and Child)

This poignant image contrasts Warhol’s portrait of John Wayne and the masculine ideals of the American West. Its title, Mother and Child, recalls a canonical subject of Western art, reimagined through American mythos. The source is a 1902 postcard of the fictional “Indian Princess” named Bright Eyes, created by the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company, which employed Native performers—often from Eastern tribes—to add authenticity to traveling spectacles promoting its “tonics.”

Cowboys and Indians (Mother and Child)

1986

University of Wyoming Art Museum

2014.9.5