General Custer 1986

Andy Warhol made this print of General Custer, sometime around the 1980's. It's a screenprint and he used really flat, bold colours. It’s interesting how those colours create a sense of flatness and distance, almost like a mask. The red is so loud, especially in the hat and the sash, which really grabs your attention. Then there's the way Warhol outlines everything with these scratchy, dark lines. Look at how he uses this to define the contours of Custer's face and uniform, it’s like he's building the image from the outside in. The overall effect is quite graphic and a little unsettling, actually. Warhol's work always makes me think of Sigmar Polke, both artists used printmaking techniques, embracing imperfections and glitches, challenging our notions of originality, authorship, and the role of the artist. Neither of them offer us any easy answers, and that’s what makes them so enduring.