[5][6] She initially focused on works by such American artists as Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol.

In a 1967 photograph, she and Rauschenberg pose as a nude Adam and Eve, roles originally played by Duchamp and Brogna Perlmutter in a 1924 picture shot by Man Ray.

[11] As critic Eleanor Heartney wrote, "Sturtevant found her work met with resistance and even hostility.

"[12] From the early 1980s she focused on the next generation of artists, including Robert Gober, Anselm Kiefer, Paul McCarthy, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

[13] She mastered painting, sculpture, photography and film in order to produce a full range of copies of the works of her chosen artists.

This has given rise to discussions among art critics on how it had been possible for Sturtevant to identify those artists at such an early stage.

Sturtevant commented on her work at her 2012 retrospective Sturtevant: Image over Image at the Moderna Museet: "What is currently compelling is our pervasive cybernetic mode, which plunks copyright into mythology, makes origins a romantic notion, and pushes creativity outside the self.

One of Sturtevant's final acts of subversion was her recurring performance of a visiting artist's public lecture.

The crux of the lecture is Sturtevant's portrayal of a bitter, possibly drunk, late-career artist who cannot get any of her presentation media to work properly.

The lecture ends with Sturtevant screaming obscenities at her hapless studio assistant in the tech booth and storming off the stage.

[36] Her Warhol Flowers (1964-1971) painting series was cited by The New York Times in 2019 as one of the 25 works of art that defined the contemporary age.