Off Center

• Happy hundredth: With the show Picasso and American Art heading out on the road soon (and coming here this summer), the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones muses on the 100th anniversary of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a painting that represents “the rift, the break that divides past and future“–and, arguably, launched modern art. He concludes: “100 years on, Picasso’s is still so new, so troubling, it would be an insult to call it a masterpiece.”

• On influences: Jasper Johns, who has a prominent place in the Picasso show, on the influence of other artists on his work: “Earlier, hoping to make paintings that I could feel were my own, I deliberately tried to avoid anything that I sensed was a reference or ­resemblance to the work of others. This didn't mean that I didn't think of others and their work. Later, as motifs, I suppose, some of this thought showed up in what I was doing.”

• Burtynsky videos: In honor of Manufactured Landscapes, the documentary on Edward Burtynsky, heading for Sundance (trailer here), here’s a series of short YouTube interviews with the photographer. And, via Zeke, here’s video of Burtynsky’s talk at last year’s TED conference.

• This program brought to you by… What will the breakup of the Altria (aka Phillip Morris) Group mean for the Whitney? Was it a racially charged bit of fiction or a scathing collage that included the logo of the school’s corporate owner that prompted the Art Institute of California to confiscate copies of the literary magazine Mute/Off and fire its advisor?