The post-modern period

In the postmodern period, which began in the 1970s, artists
and critics began to question the modernist directive to be original. In acts of deliberate defiance, many postmodern artists have appropriated (taken for their own use) well-known images from their predecessors or contemporaries. Seen against this context, Picasso's later variations on paintings by earlier masters hardly seem out of place; on the contrary, they anticipate a key aspect of art in the 1980s. One of Picasso's late works, Head of a Woman (1967), was a gift to the city of Chicago. This sculpture of welded steel, 15 m (50 ft) tall, stands in front of Chicago's Civic Center. Although its semiabstract form proved controversial at first, the sculpture soon became a city landmark.