Ronnie Cutrone  (American, 1948) 

Ronnie Cutrone (American, b.1948) is a Pop artist renowned for his vibrant, satirical paintings of American cartoon characters. He attended the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1966 to 1970, where he painted Figurative images of rescue and survival. In 1970, he turned his attention towards sculpture and drawing. Among the works he created was a group of iron cages known as The Getting to Know You Cage, several of which were displayed at the Mudd Club, a nightclub run by Cutrone from 1979 to 1982. Cutrone also served as assistant to Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987) between 1972 and 1980. Warhol and Cutrone met while Cutrone was a dancer in Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a series of multimedia performances run by Warhol from 1966 to 1967. In 1980, Jay Shriver replaced Cutrone at The Factory, so that he could focus on painting. From the early 1980s onwards, his works assumed the characteristics of Pop Art, including bold, bright colors, mass-cultural iconography, and political and social undertones. Furthermore, Cutrone’s exploration of cartoon imagery—along with that of Graffiti artist Kenny Scharf (American, b.1958)—helped revive the use of the comic strip in the late stages of the Pop Art movement. His works are housed in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others.