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not the case. Picasso not only had the assistance of past art but he would also borrow from his contemporaries as recalled by Penrose “It has often been said, not without malice, that Picasso steals anything from anyone if it intrigues him sufficiently. There are those who claim that during his close collaboration with Braque he would hurry home after a visit to his friend's studio to exploit ideas suggested by the work he had just seen. These rumors spread to such a degree, says Cocteau (who is himself not adverse from the habit of borrowing, especially from Picasso), that minor cubist painters would hide their latest pet inventions when he paid them a visit from fear that he would carry off some trivial idea on which they had staked their hopes of fame. It is not the theft however that is important - the world of ideas should have no frontiers - it is what is made of it afterwards. A worse practice which can lead to complete sterility is indicated by Picasso when he says: "To copy others is necessary but to copy oneself is pathetic" (Picasso qtd. in Penrose 191).

Furthermore, Picasso was compelled to make art but lacking subjects (either through his choice of living in isolation or the practice of not working from the model which naturally developed when Picasso and Braque were creating their cubist works at the beginning of the twentieth century) he chose to combine subjects gleaned from others' art or took his subject matter from works he had previously painted. Picasso, having exiled himself, was close to letting painting become a mere exercise or game in his isolation. John Berger commented on this particular problem “The horror of it all is that it is a life without reality. Picasso is only happy when working. Yet he has nothing of his own to work on. He takes up the themes of other painter's pictures. He decorates pots and plates that other men make for him. He is reduced to playing like a child. He becomes again the child prodigy” (Berger 180).

Parmelin related that in 1964, Spitzer, a Berlin publisher, sent Picasso a package of reproductions of one of Picasso's own paintings of an artist. Picasso proceeded to make variations of it. Picasso said “I could do thousands of them. It's marvelou to work like this from a painter who's already there. Basically the most terrible thing of all for a painter is a blank canvas” (Picasso qtd. in Parmelin 97).

Also, throughout Picasso's production there occured a transformation of

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