An earthquake in the art world: The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Andy Warhol violated the rights of photographers by using the image of Prince

The Supreme Court of the United States gave this Thursday reason to photographer Lynn Goldsmithwho launched a crusade seven years ago to recognize this Andy Warhol infringed his copyright by creating a series of screen prints from a picture of the singer taken by Goldsmith Prince. The Supreme Court thus agreed with photographer Lynn Goldsmith and rejected arguments by the Andy Warhol Foundation, which argued that her work was transformative enough not to raise copyright issues.

Nine judges of the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, ruled in that direction by seven votes to two. According to progressive Justice Sonia Sotomayor, “Goldsmith’s original works, like those of other photographers, are subject to copyright protectioneven against famous artists”, and this protection “includes the right to prepare derivative works which transform the original”.

Prince was the subject of a high-profile ruling by the Supreme Court today. The court sided with photographer Lynn Goldsmith, who took the iconic portrait of Prince in 1981 that Andy Warhol then used to create his own images of Prince in 1984.

“Original works by Lynn Goldsmith, such as… pic.twitter.com/HwL5kxUC3V

—Prince (@prince) May 18, 2023

Last October, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments, which focused on technicalities. Both sides tried to prove whether Warhol’s work transformed the essence of the original work to determine whether royalties should be paid.

Warhol made 16 screen prints of Prince’s photo

Goldsmith, known for her photographs of musicians, shot a series of photographs for the magazine of Prince as he began to emerge as a pop star Newsweek 1981. Three years later, when the musician gained fame by releasing Purple rainother publication, vanity fairhe asked Warhol to do an illustration of Prince for an article and asked him to use one of those photos as a reference. vanity fair paid a $400 license fee to the photographer and committed in writing use that image only in that issue of the magazine.

It is not known whether Warhol was aware of this agreement, but the artist created a series of 16 screen prints of Prince, for which I had the copyright. One of them was used for the article about vanity fair. Warhol took Goldsmith’s black-and-white image and injected it with color (obviously, mastering purple), as he had done for decades with figures like Jackie Kennedy, Mick Jagger and Marilyn Monroe.

Since then, these screen prints have been sold and reproduced they have benefited the Andy Warhol Foundation in the hundreds of millions of dollarsa non-profit organization created after his death to promote his work and visual arts.

When Prince died in 2016, magazine vanity fair decided to dust off the commission to Warhol (died 1987) and paid $10,250 to the Andy Warhol Foundation for use of the second silkscreen in the seriesthe one with the orange background, the title Prince of Orange. Then Goldsmith discovered that the artist had used her work to create other paintings without her knowledge. So he sued the Andy Warhol Foundation, because it had given permission to publish, without attribution (or compensation) to Goldsmith.

Before reaching the Supreme Court, the case accumulated two contradictory sentences. A federal judge ruled in favor of the foundation, finding that what Warhol did with the source material could be considered “transformational” because, he wrote in the ruling, it turned Goldsmith’s portrait into an icon.

Now seven judges against two have ruled in favor of the photographer. However, the person responsible for writing the dissenting opinion of this sentence was the liberal Elena Kagan (the chief justice of the high court, the conservative John Roberts, was the second justice to agree with her position). “Punishment will stifle creativity of all kinds. It will prevent new art, music and literature. This will thwart the expression of new ideas and the attainment of new knowledge. It will make our world poorer.”