> if you had never heard of picasso before and just passed this same image, maybe as graffiti on the street, would it have had a similar impact on you? Probabl

> if you had never heard of picasso before and just passed this same image, maybe as graffiti on the street, would it have had a similar impact on you? Probably not as big, but I think it would have some kind of impact. I've certainly seen "street" art that impressed me greatly, as compared with simple scrawling of initials or similar. I don't think you can really divorce art from its creator and your knowledge of the history behind it, unless you have no previous knowledge of the artist at all. In this case, yes, the context around it, his age etc. definitely colored my experience of it.