``Art is theft,`` Picasso once proclaimed, and much of the best and most ``original`` new art involves an act or two of unequivocal, overt theft. ``These are really the issues of our time.`` Beg, Steal and Borrow offers a comprehensive and. ``The plagiarism and copyright trials of the twenty-first century are what the obscenity trials were to the twentieth century,`` Kenneth Goldsmith, has observed.
Paradoxically, the law relating to artistic borrowing has grown more restrictive. ``Art is theft,`` Picasso once proclaimed, and much of the best and most ``original`` new art involves an act or two of unequivocal, overt theft