A painting, a removed work, and a copyright fight: Kelly Reemtsen sues David Salle over 'Hatchet'

On 8 July 2026, Los Angeles-based artist Kelly Reemtsen asked a New York federal court to either hand over or order the destruction of a 2025 painting by the established American artist David Salle, titled Hatchet. The filing, first reported by ARTNEWS, alleges that the work infringes her copyright and seeks the relief typically reserved for knock-off luggage and bootleg merchandise: surrender of the infringing object, or its destruction at the defendant's expense.

The lawsuit is small in dollar terms — neither side is claiming statutory damages in headlines — but it touches one of the more delicate fault lines in contemporary art: how much of one artist's composition another can quote, re-stage, or re-photograph before the line between homage and infringement snaps. For an A-list painter working in a medium that has long traded on quotation and pastiche, the answer is rarely theoretical.

What the complaint says

According to ARTNEWS's reporting on the complaint, Reemtsen's grievance is twofold. She alleges that Hatchet reproduces a specific composition she previously created — that the formal arrangement, the placement of figures and props, and the surface logic are substantially similar — and that she never authorised Salle to use her work. The complaint's alternative remedies — transfer to the plaintiff or destruction — track the standard remedies available under the U.S. Copyright Act's section 503 for infringing copies, which are crafted for physical objects whose continued existence itself constitutes further infringement.

Salle, who is in his late seventies and whose market position sits comfortably within the postwar American canon, removed Hatchet from the gallery show that had included it, ARTNEWS reports. Removal is a step defendants sometimes take early in a dispute to signal seriousness about contesting the claim rather than about profiting from it. It is not, on its own, an admission.

The legal frame, translated

American copyright law does not protect ideas — only their specific expression — and the line between an idea and its expression is exactly where these cases live. A plaintiff generally has to show ownership of a valid copyright, copying of protected elements, and "substantial similarity" between the works as they would appear to an ordinary observer. The last phrase is doing a lot of work: it instructs courts to ask whether the defendant's work is, in ordinary viewing, recognisable as taking from the plaintiff's.

For painters who quote openly — Salle, Cindy Sherman, John Baldessari before his death, and a younger generation that has absorbed the Pictures generation wholesale — the question is whether the quotation is transformative, satirical, or critical enough that it qualifies as fair use. Reemtsen's complaint, on the face of what ARTNEWS describes, is not arguing that Salle used her image ironically or as commentary; it argues he used her composition without permission in a work presented under his name.

There is also the moral-rights question, which American copyright law treats more narrowly than its European counterparts. The Visual Artists Rights Act gives living artists a limited right of attribution and integrity against distortion, modification, or destruction of "work of visual art," and it does not apply to most works created under work-for-hire or by employees. Reemtsen's complaint appears to proceed under copyright rather than VARA — ARTNEWS's account centres on infringement and the section 503 remedies — but the integrity doctrine hovers in the background of any dispute between two living painters over a painting that depicts recognisably similar imagery.

What Salle's defenders typically argue

The defence in cases like this tends to run along three tracks, and one can expect elements of each to surface in Salle's response. The first is non-substantial similarity: Hatchet, the argument would go, departs from Reemtsen's composition in lighting, palette, scale, or content; the resemblance is at the level of subject matter — which is not protectable — and not the level of expression, which is. The second is fair use: even if there is some taking, Salle will likely argue that Hatchet comments on or transforms its source, that the portion taken is reasonable, and that any harm to Reemtsen's market is theoretical or de minimis. The third is independent creation — that two painters working in overlapping idioms may reach similar arrangements without one having seen the other's canvas.

None of these defences is pre-emptive. ARTNEWS's reporting does not include a statement from Salle or his counsel at the time the complaint became public, and federal filings of this kind invite a robust answer at the answer stage rather than an immediate comment.

Stakes, and what the case actually tests

For Reemtsen, the case is straightforward: she is seeking to control a specific image and asking the court to enforce what she believes is her copyright. For Salle, the case implicates a wider professional liberty that quotation-rich painters have long assumed: the freedom to appropriate, restage, and recombine imagery drawn from a common visual culture — including the imagery of living peers — and to call the result one's own painting.

The structural question, posed without academic scaffolding, is whether the legal system treats painterly appropriation as it does quotation in journalism, protected because the use is transformative and credited, or as it does reproduction in commercial markets, controlled because the user profits from someone else's expressive labour. Section 503 itself tilts the answer toward the latter for infringing copies of physical works. How a judge applies that tilt to a painting that also argues aesthetic merit is the live dispute.

What remains uncertain

The published material on the dispute is, at this point, essentially a single news report. ARTNEWS does not yet cite a court filing number, a docket date, or the assigned judge, and the venue — which federal district in New York, and whether the Eastern or Southern District — is not specified in the summary that has been published. Salle and his gallery have not, on the available record, made a public statement. The complaint's specific images, side-by-side comparisons, and any expert declarations by art historians or studio practitioners are not yet in the public record. Until the defendant's answer lands and the case enters discovery, much of what is in dispute will be visible only in the exhibits.

What is visible is the procedural posture: a copyright plaintiff has invoked section 503's surrender-or-destroy remedy against a major living painter, and the work has already been pulled from the show that included it. The next dated milestones will be Salle's answer, any preliminary motions, and the court's scheduling order.

— Monexus framed this as a copyright doctrine story first; some outlets will reach for the more colourful artist-vs-artist angle. The legal posture is the more durable read until the answer is filed.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Salle
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use