PAGING PICASSO; For his American peers, Picasso had a sweeping influence.((Max Weber, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, David Smith, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns to exhibit their creations)

Byline: Dodie Kazanjian

Picasso and American Art," one of the most keenly anticipated exhibitions of any season, opens September 28 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Eleven years in the making, it centers on nine American artists (Max Weber, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, David Smith, Roy Lich-

tenstein, and Jasper Johns), all of whom were slugging it out with Picasso's influence while the master was still alive and sucking up what often seemed like all the available aesthetic oxygen. "I could have had 30 different artists," says Michael FitzGerald, the guest curator and Picasso scholar who organized the show in collaboration with the Whitney's associate curator Dana Miller. He decided instead to concentrate on a smaller group, "to look at this dialogue in greater depth, and deal with the artists who had the most substantial response to Picasso and had also made the greatest contribution to art internationally on the basis of that response."

The show includes about 165 works, 38 of which are Picassos.

Some of his best-known canvases are paired with the American works they specifically influenced-The Studio with Gorky's Organization and Smith's Interior; Bullfight with Pollock's The Water Bull; Minotaur Moving with Johns's Summer. ...