NEW YORK (AP) – A U.S. court of appeals joined a photographer on Friday in a copyright dispute over how a foundation marketed a series of Andy Warhol’s works of art based on one of his photographs with Prince.
The Second U.S. Court of Appeal in New York ruled that the artwork created by Warhol before his death in 1987 was not transformative and could not exceed the copyright obligations of photographer Lynn Goldsmith. He returned the case to a lower court for further proceedings.
In a statement, Goldsmith said she was grateful for the outcome of the 4-year struggle initiated by a trial of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. She said the foundation wants to “use my photo without asking my permission or paying me anything for my work.”
“I fought this process to protect not only my own rights, but also the rights of all photographers and visual artists to earn a living by licensing their creative work – and also to decide when, how and even if they exploit their creative works or license others to do so, ”Goldsmith said.
Warhol created a series of 16 works of art based on a 1981 image of Prince by Goldsmith, a pioneering photographer known for portraits of famous musicians. The series contained 12 screenprints, two serigraphs on paper and two drawings.
“Crucially, the Prince series retains the essentials of Goldsmith photography without adding or significantly altering those elements,” the second circuit said in a written decision by Judge Gerard E. Lynch.
A concurring opinion written by circuit judge Dennis Jacobs said the ruling would not affect the use of Warhol Prince 16 series works purchased by various galleries, art dealers and the Andy Warhol Museum, as Goldsmith did not challenge those rights.
The ruling overturned a 2019 ruling by a judge who concluded that Warhol’s interpretations were so different from Goldsmith’s photograph that they transcended copyright owned by Goldsmith, whose work has been featured on more than 100 album covers since the 1960s.
U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl of Manhattan concluded that Warhol turned an image of a vulnerable and awkward prince into a work of art that made the singer an “iconic figure, larger than life.”
In 1984, Vanity Fair licensed one of Goldsmith’s studio portraits, in black and white, to Prince from the December 1981 film for $ 400 and commissioned Warhol to create an illustration of Prince for an article entitled “Purple Fame ”.
The dispute arose after Prince’s death in 2016, when the Andy Warhol Foundation for Fine Arts authorized the use of the Prince Warhol series to be used in a magazine commemorating Prince’s life. One of Warhol’s creations was on the cover of the magazine in May 2016.
Goldsmith claimed that the publication of the Warhol work of art destroyed a profile license opportunity.
Prosecutor Luke Nikas said the Warhol Foundation would challenge the decision.
“Over fifty years of established art history and popular consensus confirm that Andy Warhol is one of the most transformative artists of the 20th century,” Nikas said in a statement. “Although the Warhol Foundation does not agree with the decision of the second circuit, it does not change this fact and does not change the impact of Andy Warhol’s work on history.”
Prosecutor Barry Werbin, who represented Goldsmith in the lower court, called Friday’s ruling “a long-standing delay in what had become an overly expansive application of fair use” transformative “copyright.”
“The decision helps to claim the rights of photographers who risk their works being misappropriated for commercial use by famous artists under the guise of fair use,” he said.
The second three-judge circuit said its ruling should help clarify copyright law. He warned against judges who make “inherently subjective” aesthetic judgments, saying that “they should not assume the role of art critic and seek to find out the intention or meaning of the works in question.”
He has repeatedly compared copyright issues to what happens when books are turned into movies. The film, he said, is often quite different from the book, but still retains its copyright obligations.
The Court of Appeal also said that the unique nature of Warhol’s art should have no bearing on the fact that the work of art is sufficiently transformative to be considered the “correct use” of a copyright, a legal term that would artist from the payment of licensing fees for the raw material was based on.
“We feel compelled to clarify that it is completely irrelevant to this analysis that” every work in the Prince series is immediately recognized as ‘Warhol,’ “the appellate court said. “Distracting this logic would inevitably create a celebrity-plagiarism privilege; the more established the artist and the more distinct the artist’s style, the more freedom the artist should have to throw the creative work of others. ”