Andy Warhol and Ronnie Cutrone

Andy Warhol and Ronnie Cutrone’s relationship was a working partnership shaped by the practical demands of Warhol’s studio and by disagreement over what the work should become. Cutrone moved from dancing with the Exploding Plastic Inevitable in the 1960s to serving as Warhol’s painting assistant in the 1970s; one diary entry captures both the proximity of their work and Cutrone’s willingness to challenge Warhol’s decisions.

From performer to painting assistant

Cutrone’s connection to Warhol spanned two phases of the artist’s practice. In the 1960s, Cutrone danced with the Exploding Plastic Inevitable; in the following decade, he worked as Warhol’s painting assistant. His later comments also show him thinking beyond the immediate tasks of the studio, interpreting portraiture in relation to shifting artistic styles and the financial demands of keeping Warhol’s operation running.

Portraits as art and livelihood

Commissioned portraits were a major source of Warhol’s income through much of the 1970s and continued to be important until his death. Cutrone described their emergence as a practical response to a changed art world: Pop Art had passed its moment, new movements were appearing, and Warhol still had an office to run and a magazine he felt needed his financial support. In Cutrone’s account, portraits of private clients extended Warhol’s earlier celebrity images—the Marilyns, Lizzes, Elvises, and Marlons—by giving non-show-business subjects a kind of equivalence to cultural legends.

Warhol’s portrait practice also depended on an organized studio process. He took about sixty Polaroids of a subject, selected images for screen printing, chose and retouched a final composition, and transferred it to canvas, where painted color and the screened image could shift slightly out of alignment. A first canvas typically cost about $25,000, with additional canvases priced at about $5,000 each. This was the commercial and technical environment in which Cutrone worked as a painting assistant, although the account does not specify which steps of the portrait process he personally performed.

A dispute over the work

On February 2, 1977, Warhol and Cutrone argued over a set of Hammers & Sickles. While Warhol had been away, Cutrone had cut and stretched them; Warhol said he did not want them prepared that way. Cutrone objected that he had done the work for nothing. Warhol answered that the effort did not matter if the result was unnecessary, explaining that he often did not know what he wanted until he saw what he did not want. Cutrone accepted that process as worthwhile if Warhol could use it to decide, but resented having worked for no reason at all.

The exchange reveals a tension built into their collaboration: Warhol treated making and rejecting as part of arriving at a decision, while Cutrone wanted the labor itself to have a purpose. The disagreement did not erase their working relationship; rather, it makes visible the difference between Warhol’s exploratory way of working and the assistant’s concern that effort should lead somewhere.

The partnership in context

Cutrone’s role gave him a close view of the connection between Warhol’s artistic choices and the operation that supported them. His explanation of commissioned portraits links a change in subject matter to the need to maintain both a studio and a magazine, while the argument over the Hammers & Sickles shows how that working system could produce friction in everyday practice. Together, these moments present the relationship not simply as an artist directing an assistant, but as a collaboration in which Cutrone contributed labor and an independent understanding of the forces shaping Warhol’s work.