A painting in David Salle’s new exhibition at Sprüth Magers in Los Angeles has been removed from view after critics questioned whether the painter copied another artist’s work. Salle’s painting, Hatchet (2025), features as its primary subject a woman in a black-and-white dress—her face cropped by the edge of the canvas—brandishing a sledgehammer. The exhibition, titled “My Frankenstein,” opened on February 24, and social media chatter quickly picked up on the resemblance to Kelly Reemsten’s painting Impact (2021). Related Articles In a video that has since drawn nearly 10,000 views, the Minneapolis-based artist Josie Lewis asked: “Did Salle steal this woman’s idea, or is it just harmless appropriation?” Reemtsen later shared the video on her Instagram page. She declined to comment to ARTnews. Salle is commonly associated with the Pictures Generation, a group of American artists who emerged in the mid-1970s and early ’80s, among them Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler, Robert Longo, and Richard 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—and even other artists’ work. Salle is one of the few painters who has been …