Supreme Court Will Hear Copyright Struggle Over Andy Warhol’s Footage


WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether Andy Warhol violated copyright law by painting a photo for a series of images of musician Prince.

The case will test the extent of a fair use defense against copyright infringement and how to evaluate whether a new work based on an older work can meaningfully transform it.

The black and white image Warhol used was taken in 1981 by Lynn Goldsmith, a well-known photographer whose work has appeared on more than 100 album covers.

Ms Goldsmith licensed the image to Vanity Fair in connection with a 1984 article, and Warhol altered it in various ways, notably by cropping and coloring it to create what her foundation’s lawyers described as “a flat, impersonal, disembodied, masked look.” ”

Accompanied by the picture An article titled “Purple Fame” and appeared during Prince’s “Purple Rain” album.

Before Warhol died in 1987, he painted 15 other pictures of the Prince on the same photograph. When Prince died in 2016, Vanity Fair published a special issue celebrating his life, using one of these images to warn Ms. Goldsmith of the existence of other artifacts.

The lawsuit followed, with many centered on whether Warhol had altered the photograph of Mrs. Goldsmith, this question was included in the fair use analysis. this The Supreme Court said A work is transformative if it “adds something new with a different purpose or a different character, replacing the first with a new expression, meaning, or message.”

in 2019 Judge John G. Koeltl Manhattan Federal District Court, managed for The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, which holds Warhol’s own copyrights in the footage, said the artist had “transformed the musician depicted in Mrs Goldsmith’s photograph from a vulnerable, disturbed person into an iconic, larger-than-life figure.” ”

“The humanity that the Prince embodied in Goldsmith’s photograph no longer exists,” Judge Koeltl wrote. “Furthermore, every Prince series work is immediately recognizable as a ‘Warhol’ rather than a photograph of Prince – just as Warhol’s famous representations of Marilyn Monroe and Mao can be recognized as ‘Warhols’ rather than as realistic photographs of these individuals. ”

A panel of three unanimous judges of the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, Judge overturns Koeltl’s decision.

“The district judge should not assume the role of art critic and try to determine the intent or meaning behind the works in question” Judge Gerard E. Lynch Wrote for the panel. “This is both because judges are typically unfit to make aesthetic judgments, and because such perceptions are subjective in nature.”

The judge’s job, Judge Lynch wrote, is to assess whether the later work “both recognizably derived from the source material and retains essential elements of the source material.” Warhol’s Prince series “preserves essential elements of the jeweler’s photograph without significantly adding to or altering these elements,” Judge Lynch wrote.

Judge Lynch wrote that the immediate recognition of the new footage as Warhols was trivial.

“Amusing this logic will inevitably create a celebrity-plagiarism privilege; The more established the artist and the more specific the artist’s style, the more freedom the artist will have to steal the creative work of others.

Warhol Foundation Lawyers He told the Supreme Court He said the Prince series transformed the photographs of Ms. Goldsmith by “commenting on celebrity and consumerism”.

The Second Circuit’s approach will “cool off artistic expression and undermine First Amendment values”, “threaten a major change in copyright law”, and “create a cloud of legal uncertainty over an entire genre of visual art,” they wrote.

Lawyers for Miss Goldsmith wrote this “Warhol’s screenprints shared the same purpose as Goldsmith’s copyrighted photograph and retained the essential artistic elements of Goldsmith’s photograph.”

The Second Chamber’s decision was routine and limited, urging judges to reject the foundation’s petition seeking a review of the case, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith, no. 21-869. “Take a Chicken-Small approach to the following decision, but the sky isn’t even close to falling,” the foundation’s lawyers wrote.



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