Action Picture 375 (Trial Proof) by Andy Warhol captures a violent burst of motion rendered through jagged linework and saturated color. Horses surge forward across the surface, their bodies fractured into streaks of pink, red, and deep maroon-brown against a muted ground. At the center, a cowboy fires from horseback, while to the right a Native American figure raises a traditional weapon. Faces dissolve into gesture, and detail gives way to speed, so the image reads less as a historical scene than as a flash of collective memory.
This work belongs to Warhol’s Cowboys and Indians series. However, it exists as a trial proof for an image that never entered the final regular edition portfolio. As a result, Action Picture 375 (Trial Proof) functions both as a working proof from the editioning process and as a portfolio-adjacent work. It is also the only image in the series to place cowboys and Native Americans in direct, simultaneous action.
From Wild West Spectacle to Warholian Image
Warhol based Action Picture 375 on Charles Schreyvogel’s painting Breaking Through the Line, a dramatic cavalry scene inspired by Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West shows. Schreyvogel never witnessed the historical events he depicted. Living in Hoboken, New Jersey, he relied on staged reenactments and theatrical performances that already blurred history into spectacle. Warhol, raised in Pittsburgh decades later, absorbed the American West in much the same way, through films, television, and popular imagery rather than lived experience.
By selecting Schreyvogel’s work, Warhol foregrounds this layered distance from reality. The image does not document the West; instead, it documents how the West has been repeatedly imagined. In translating Schreyvogel’s painting into silkscreen, Warhol strips away descriptive clarity and heightens kinetic energy. Consequently, the scene becomes less about who is fighting and more about how conflict has been staged, consumed, and remembered.
Action Picture (Trial Proof) 375 in Warhol’s Larger Body of Work
Throughout the Cowboys and Indians series, Warhol removes figures from historical landscapes and places them against empty grounds. This choice mirrors his treatment of celebrities, where context collapses and image becomes currency. In Action Picture 375 (Trial Proof), the myth of the West appears as a mass-produced narrative, repeated across movies, novels, and television because it satisfies audience expectations, not because it reflects historical truth.
As a trial proof, the work also reveals Warhol’s process at a moment of decision. Its raw energy, unresolved linework, and heightened contrast suggest an image tested rather than finalized. In that sense, Action Picture 375 (Trial Proof) sits squarely within Warhol’s lifelong investigation of how culture edits itself before reaching the public.
Source image: Charles Schreyvogel, Breaking Through the Line (1861–1912), Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Photo credit: Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
