Andy Warhol’s Northwest Coast Mask (F.S. II.380), 1986, stands as a compelling intersection of Pop Art aesthetics and Indigenous cultural symbolism. Created as part of the artist’s Cowboys and Indians portfolio, the screenprint reinterprets a traditional ceremonial mask worn by Indigenous communities of the Pacific Northwest. Warhol isolates the object against a flat ground, presenting the face in saturated blues, vivid reds, and bright yellow accents, emphasizing symmetry, bold contouring, and rhythmic patterning to heighten its visual impact.

Within Cowboys and Indians, Warhol juxtaposes pop-culture mythmaking - embodied by figures like John Wayne and Annie Oakley - with Native American subjects, drawing attention to the idealized and often distorted portrayals of the American West in Hollywood and popular imagination. Warhol does not attempt ethnographic accuracy in this work, he elevates the mask within a contemporary art framework, inviting viewers to reconsider how cultural artifacts are transformed when removed from their original context. By doing so, he highlights ongoing questions of representation, appropriation, and cultural memory. Northwest Coast Mask thus becomes both an homage and a critique, a striking and compelling Pop image that transforms the mask into a site of cultural reflection.

This work is from the portfolio of ten screenprints, Cowboys and Indians. The catalogue raisonné states that there are 250 prints in the edition, 50 AP, 15 PP, 15 HC, 10 numbered in Roman numerals. This screenprint Northwest Coast Mask is signed and numbered in pencil lower right. There are 36 TP of the portfolio, signed and numbered in pencil, which contained four additional prints.

Printed by Rupert Jasen Smith, New York and published by Gaultney, Klineman Art, Inc., New York.