[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/salle-e1772740284882.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tA painting in\u00a0David Salle\u2019s new exhibition\u00a0at\u00a0Spr\u00fcth\u00a0Magers\u00a0in Los Angeles has been removed from view after critics questioned whether the painter copied another artist\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
\n\tSalle\u2019s painting,\u00a0Hatchet <\/em>(2025), features as its primary subject a woman in a black-and-white dress\u2014her face cropped by the edge of the canvas\u2014brandishing a sledgehammer.\u00a0The exhibition, titled \u201cMy Frankenstein,\u201d\u00a0opened on February 24, and social media chatter quickly\u00a0picked up on\u00a0the resemblance to Kelly\u00a0Reemsten\u2019s\u00a0painting\u00a0Impact<\/em> (2021).<\/p>\n \n\tIn a video that has since drawn\u00a0nearly 10,000\u00a0views, the Minneapolis-based artist\u00a0Josie Lewis\u00a0asked: \u201cDid Salle steal this woman\u2019s idea, or is it just harmless appropriation?\u201d\u00a0Reemsten later shared the video on her Instagram page.\u00a0She declined to comment to ARTnews<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tSalle is commonly associated with the Pictures Generation, a group of American artists who\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\temerged\u00a0in the mid-1970s and early \u201980s, among them\u00a0Cindy Sherman,\u00a0Louise Lawler, Robert Longo, and\u00a0Richard Prince, whose work probed the vast amount of images available for mass consumption. These artists often produced photography, painting, and graphic design that incorporated images from films, videos, television, and advertising\u2014and even other artists\u2019 work. Salle is one of the few painters who has been aligned with the group by critics.<\/p>\n \n\tThis kind of work, often known as appropriation art, has periodically courted controversy. Prince, for example, has faced a years-long legal battle over his\u00a0Canal Zone<\/em>\u00a0paintings (2008), which incorporated photographs by French photographer\u00a0Patrick Cariou. Cariou\u00a0ultimately sued\u00a0Prince, as well as\u00a0Gagosian Gallery\u00a0and\u00a0Rizzoli, for copyright infringement.<\/p>\n \n\tIn an emailed statement to\u00a0ARTnews<\/em>,\u00a0dealers Monika\u00a0Spr\u00fcth\u00a0and\u00a0Philomene Magers\u00a0drew attention to Salle\u2019s appropriations of the past, noting that he \u201chas historically borrowed images from popular culture, advertising, art, his own photographs, and other sources to create his own interpretations on canvas, continuing a long tradition of artists drawing from the past and from one another. In turn, his works have been used by other artists without his permission.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThey continued: \u201cFor his latest exhibition,\u00a0\u2018My Frankenstein,\u2019\u00a0Salle has continued to mine a variety of images from physical and online domains, some of which may be recognizable or attributable to other sources. He acknowledges that his use of\u00a0Kelly\u00a0Reemtsen\u2019s\u00a0image has restarted a decades-long dialogue about authorship for new audiences.\u00a0While both Salle and the gallery feel this is an important conversation to have, in consultation with David Salle, and out of respect to both artists, this work has been removed from view.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSalle declined to comment.<\/p>\n \n\tThe oil-and-acrylic paintings in Salle\u2019s latest exhibition were created, in part, with artificial intelligence. In recent years,\u00a0Salle\u00a0has collaborated with an engineer on a generative AI model trained on his own oeuvre, feeding it curated selections of past works and prompting it to produce new image configurations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAmy Adler, a legal professor at New York University specializing in art and law, told ARTnews<\/em>: \u201cIf this went to litigation, I think Salle would have a tough time defending this under fair use,\u201d given the likeness and fact both are practicing fine artists. \u201c[Salle] is one of the pioneers in this conversation about borrowing in art, and I respect that taking the image down was a gesture toward [Reemtsen]. Nonetheless, that it was taken down would not be legally relevant under a copyright lawsuit.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tShe added that his defense would likely hinge on several key pressure points: whether the message or meaning of the original image was sufficiently transformed; whether the two works serve different purposes; and whether the disparity in the artists\u2019 price ranges effectively places them in isolated markets.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSince the Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, there has been a greater emphasis on purpose [in fair use disputes]. So a defendant like Salle would have a hard time in court because he and Reemsten appear to have the same purpose, making fine art,\u201d said Adler.<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to the exhibition\u2019s website, the project \u201creflects the artist\u2019s recognition of the conflict inherent in [Salle\u2019s] embrace of this new, still-evolving technology.\u201d The text adds that the works also function as a \u201cpotent metaphor for the unintended consequences of scientific ambition,\u201d invoking\u00a0Mary Shelley\u2019s novel\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tSpeaking to\u00a0The Art Newspaper<\/em>\u00a0in April 2025,\u00a0on the occasion of\u00a0his show\u00a0\u201cSome Versions of Pastoral\u201d,\u00a0David\u00a0Salle described\u00a0training his AI to produce digital images as \u201clengthy trial and error\u201d but ultimately \u201cso rewarding \u2026 [and] inviting [of] my intervention\u201d as an artist. He added that the experience sharpened his own \u201cability to respond with a brush\u201d alongside \u201cthe machine imagery evolving.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSalle added that the process grew more complex, \u201cwhen I fed the machine dozens of\u00a0paintings\u00a0I made that were\u00a0essentially thick-brush\u00a0sketches of figures in space and domestic settings of household objects, of things in nature. But the subject was not important; what was important was the creation of an edge with a brush\u2014that\u2019s\u00a0a meaningful mark and\/or shape.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/ai-david-salle-painting-removed-spruth-magers-1234775836\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/salle-e1772740284882.jpg?w=1024″] A painting in\u00a0David Salle\u2019s new exhibition\u00a0at\u00a0Spr\u00fcth\u00a0Magers\u00a0in Los Angeles has been removed from view after critics questioned whether the painter copied another artist\u2019s work. Salle\u2019s painting,\u00a0Hatchet (2025), features as its primary subject a woman in a black-and-white dress\u2014her face cropped by the edge of the canvas\u2014brandishing a sledgehammer.\u00a0The exhibition, titled \u201cMy Frankenstein,\u201d\u00a0opened on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1812323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1812323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1812323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1812323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1812323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}