All artists steal, borrow and learn from each other. Michaelangelo learned from Giotto, Titian was influenced by Bellini, Cézanne was borrowed by Pissarro and vice versa. Picasso, voracious by nature, plundered Velázquez and many, many others; indeed, he was known to be such a visual thief that when he visited another's studio, artists were advised to turn their canvases to the wall.

Now Picasso's own all-pervasive influence on American art is examined in a spectacular feat of evaluation at New York's Whitney Museum. Some 40 of his masterpieces are juxtaposed with works by nine leading US artists: Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, David Smith and Max Weber. Some ofthe pairings are predictable, others surprising, many are illuminating.