Pop art was a rejection of the abstractionism that had dominated art since the 1940s. Pop art refused to see abstract art, based on the idea of “progress”, as the culmination of “modernist” art history. For pop artists, Picasso was a contemporary icon, like comic book heroes or Liz Taylor, and his style was immediately recognisable. For this reason, Claes Oldenburg challenged the copyright of one of Picasso’s rare public works, the 1967 Chicago Picasso, because it was as identifiable as an everyday consumption item. Picasso influenced another pop artist, Roy Lichtenstein, who considered the Spaniard a key artistic source from the 1950s onwards. His reinterpretations of and allusions to Picasso’s work seem to indicate that anything can be reinvented and that everything coexists in art. In line with this view, the linear, modernist and progressive approach to art history is a fallacy. Warhol’s series of Heads (After Picasso) and Erró’s repeated depictions of Picasso characters are part of this deconstruction. Lichtenstein, Oldenburg and Erró are “post-modern” – they question the importance of historic models such as Picasso by imposing their own style on them.
