No, it isn’t

Robert Wyland, who paints whale pictures for tourist galleries, is having a spat with California’s DMV over the whale-tail license plate:

One of California’s most popular specialty license plates depicting the tail of a Pacific humpback whale rising out of misty waters could soon become as endangered as the mammoth mammal.

Robert Wyland, the artist who created the pale blue image and gave it to the state more than a decade ago to help it raise money for marine programs, is now demanding 20 percent of any future revenue for his art foundation.

Fair enough, but here’s the part that caught my eye:

“I would just say it would be like Picasso lending one of his pieces for a license plate and them saying we’re not donating to the Picasso Foundation,” said Wyland, an official artist for the United States Olympic Team for the 2008 Games. “They’re saying ‘We can get anyone to paint a Picasso.’ Well you could, but it wouldn’t be a Picasso.”

This is exactly right, except for the fact that Pablo Picasso never made license plates, never commissioned his work for keychains, and the fact Wyland is to Picasso what Pauley Shore is to Charles Chaplin.