excessive quotes from the work of particular authors in this article ok looking at it from another way just looking at the footnotes you have quoted excessively from some sources deitcher david deitcher david unsentimental education the professionalization of the american artist loran wrote his two article after lichtenstein's first pop exhibition in los angeles which included the artist's life sized versions of images from loran's book deitcher david unsentimental education the professionalization of the american artist portrait of madame c zanne and femme au chapeau both of were among the first paintings in which lichtenstein based an image directly on a picture by an illustrious predecessor introducing the theme of art about art both are presented at two removes from the original c zanne's portrait of his wife is transposed with significant but subtle alterations from a diagram book c zanne composition published a quarter of a century earlier lichtenstein was amused by the oversimplified and paradoxical idea that a flat diagram consisting solely of thick black outline could be used to represent the frenchmen's work given c zanne's insistence on eliminating contours from his paintings as incapable of suggesting the corporeal reality of the three dimensional motif from which he was working deitcher david unsentimental education the professionalization of the american artist the contradictory character of the pop object was central to an unusually lively and revealing debate late in it was lichtenstein's earliest pop paintings that provoked this controversy which led critic brian o'doherty also an artist under the name patric ireland to identify completely new class of object the 'handmade readymade ' reviewing the artist's second pop show in the new york times o'doherty labeled him 'one of the worst artists in america ' nonetheless he also credited him with creating paintings that 'raised some of the most difficult problems in art ' o'doherty took note of an argument that had just erupted in the art press the september issues both of art news and artforum had run angry features about pop art in general and lichtenstein's work in particular deitcher david unsentimental education the professionalization of the american artist erle loran who had targeted two paintings by lichtenstein portrait of mme c zanne and man with folded arms both in order to excoriate some of the salient features of the new art each painting was a characteristically brazen blowup of a diagram from loran's book c zanne composition then twenty years old deitcher david unsentimental education the professionalization of the american artist both loran and o'doherty thought it absurd that so many supporters of pop were defending lichtenstein by insisting that he 'transformed' rather than 'copied' his sources claiming that only an expert could discern the difference o'doherty found this hairsplitting quite beside the point after all it had been possible to classify direct appropriation as art since when that 'old master of innovation ' duchamp had 'started it all by setting up his readymades and calling them art leaving on us the burden of proof that they were not ' both loran and o'doherty found the transformation alibi doubly annoying since it clinched the matter of pop's high cultural status by resorting to an altogether academic and contradictory dual defense on one hand pop was art because it 'put a frame of consciousness around a major part of american life we take for granted ' on the other pop was art because an artist like lichtenstein transformed his sources 'like a good artist should' a clich d view of fine art production deitcher david unsentimental education the professionalization of the american artist for loran the 'transformation' or 'copy' debate was spurious since the abstract expressionists had ventured 'far beyond the process of transforming nature' to produce paintings that presupposed 'no conscious source but have an identity and imagery that is autonomous ' transformation even were it detectable in lichtenstien's art could only constitute aesthetic regression deitcher david unsentimental education the professionalization of the american artist for different reasons lichtenstein himself shunned the transformation defense coplans ed coplans ed the idea of using a closely linked subject matter within a unified style of treatment is obviously suggested in the various paintings deriving from modern masters man with folded arms and portrait of madame c zanne both are quotations of outline diagrams by erle loran explaining c zanne's compositional methods and are similar in the linear black and white handling of the imagery