The question of artistic influence stirs up ceaseless analysis and scrutiny. Probing the scope of creative sway—of the connective tissue between bodies of work—highlights not only aesthetic affinities but also relationships forged between cultural figures. One such recent dialogic configuration was “Hommage à César,” timed with the centenary of the French artist’s birth (he died in 1998), at Pablo Picasso’s former studio in Boisgeloup in Normandy. The display examined how César’s oeuvre was explicitly shaped by his admiring fealty to Picasso: interpersonally, based on their shared Mediterranean