NEW YORK (AP) – A U.S. appeals court sided with a photographer on Friday in a copyright dispute over how a foundation marketed a series of Andy Warhol works of art based on one of his Prince photos .
The 2nd United States Court of Appeals, based 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 four-year feud that started a lawsuit by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. She said the foundation wanted to “use my photograph without asking for my permission or paying me anything for my work”.
“I fought against this process to protect not only my own rights, but the rights of all photographers and visual artists to earn a living by licensing their creative works – and also to decide when, how and even if they would explore their creative works or license others do it, ”said Goldsmith.
Warhol created a series of 16 works of art based on a 1981 Prince photo, taken by Goldsmith, a pioneering photographer known for portraits of famous musicians. The series contained 12 screen-printed paintings, two paper screen prints and two drawings.
“Crucially, the Prince series retains the essential elements of Goldsmith Photography without adding or significantly altering those elements,” said the 2nd Circuit in a decision written by Judge Gerard E. Lynch.
A concordant opinion written by circuit judge Dennis Jacobs said the decision would not affect the use of the 16 works in the Warhol Prince series acquired by various galleries, art dealers and the Andy Warhol Museum because Goldsmith did not contest those rights.
The ruling overturned a 2019 ruling by a judge who concluded that Warhol’s representations were so different from Goldsmith’s photography that they transcended Goldsmith’s copyright, whose work has appeared on more than 100 album covers since 1960.
US District Judge John G. Koeltl in Manhattan concluded that Warhol transformed the photo of a vulnerable and uncomfortable prince into a work of art that made the singer an “iconic and grandiose figure”.
In 1984, Vanity Fair licensed one of the black and white portraits of Prince’s Goldsmith studio from his December 1981 photo shoot for $ 400 and commissioned Warhol to create a Prince illustration for an article entitled “Purple Fame “.
The dispute arose after Prince’s death in 2016, when the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts licensed the use of the Warhol Prince series for use in a magazine commemorating Prince’s life. One of Warhol’s creations was on the cover of the May 2016 magazine.
Goldsmith said the publication of Warhol’s artwork destroyed an opportunity for high-level licensing.
Lawyer Luke Nikas said the Warhol Foundation will challenge the decision.
“More than fifty years of established art history and popular consensus confirm that Andy Warhol is one of the most transformative artists of the 20th century,” said Nikas in a statement. “Although the Warhol Foundation strongly disagrees with the Second Circuit decision, that does not change that fact, nor does it change the impact of Andy Warhol’s work on history.”
Lawyer Barry Werbin, who represented Goldsmith in the lower court, called Friday’s ruling as “a long-awaited recovery from what has become an overly expansive application of” transformative “fair use of copyright.”
“The decision helps to claim the rights of photographers who are at risk of having their work diverted to commercial use by famous artists under the guise of fair use,” he said.
The 2nd Circuit panel of three judges said their decision should help clarify copyright law. He warned against judges who make aesthetic judgments “inherently subjective”, saying that they “should not assume the role of art critic and seek to ascertain the intention behind or the meaning of the works in question”.
He has repeatedly compared copyright issues with what happens when books are made into films. The film, she noted, is often quite different from the book, but still maintains copyright obligations.
The appeals court also said that the unique nature of Warhol’s art should not have an influence on whether the work of art is sufficiently transformative to be considered “fair use” of a copyright, a legal term that would free an artist from paying fees. licensing for the raw material that was based on.
“We feel compelled to clarify that it is totally irrelevant to this analysis that” every work in the Prince series is immediately recognizable as a ‘Warhol’, “said the appeals court. “Feeding this logic would inevitably create a celebrity-plagiarist privilege; the more established the artist and the more distinct the artist’s style, the greater the leeway the artist would have to steal the creative work of others. “