US court sides with photographer in fight over Warhol art
A US appeals court sided with a photographer on Friday in a copyright dispute over how a foundation has commercialized a series of Andy Warhol artwork, based on one of his images of Prince.
The New York-based United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the artwork created by Warhol prior to his death in 1987 was not transformative and could not overcome the copyright obligations of photographer Lynn Goldsmith. He sent the case back to a lower court for further proceedings.
In a statement, Goldsmith said she was grateful for the outcome of the 4-year fight started by a lawsuit from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. He said the foundation wanted to use his photograph without asking his permission or paying him anything for the work.
“I fought this lawsuit 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 and even whether to exploit their creative works. or license others to do so. then, ”Goldsmith said.
Warhol created a series of 16 artworks based on a 1981 image of Prince that was taken by Goldsmith, a pioneering photographer known for portraits of famous musicians. The series contained 12 serigraph paintings, two serigraphs on paper, and two drawings.
This photo is a self-portrait provided by photographer Lynn Goldsmith. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York on Friday ruled in favor of Goldsmith in its copyright dispute over how the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has commercialized a series of Andy Warhol artworks based on his images of Prince. (Courtesy of Lynn Goldsmith via AP)
Fundamentally, the Prince Series preserves the essential elements of the Goldsmith Photography without significantly adding or altering those elements, the Second Circuit said in a decision written by Judge Gerard E Lynch.
A concurring opinion written by Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs said the ruling would not affect the use of the 16 works from the Warhol Prince series acquired by art dealers from various galleries and the Andy Warhol Museum because Goldsmith did not challenge those rights.
The ruling overturned a 2019 ruling by a judge that concluded that Warhol’s depictions were so different from Goldsmith’s photographs that they transcended the copyrights held by Goldsmith, whose work has appeared on more than 100 album covers since the 1990s. 1960.
US District Judge John G. Koeltl in Manhattan had concluded that Warhol transformed the image of a vulnerable and uncomfortable prince into a work of art that turned the singer into an iconic figure larger than life.
In 1984, Vanity Fair licensed one of Goldsmiths ‘black and white Prince portraits from their December 1981 photo shoot for 400, and commissioned Warhol to create an illustration of Prince for an article titled’ Purple Fame ‘.
The dispute arose after Prince’s death in 2016, when the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts authorized the use of Warhol’s Prince series for use in a magazine commemorating Prince’s life. One of Warhol’s creations appeared on the cover of the May 2016 magazine.
Goldsmith claimed that the publication of Warhol’s artwork destroyed a high-profile licensing opportunity. Attorney Luke Nikas said the Warhol Foundation will challenge the ruling.
“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. While the Warhol Foundation strongly disagrees with the Second Circuit ruling, it does not change this fact or change the impact of Andy Warhol’s work on history.
Attorney Barry Werbin, who represented Goldsmith in lower court, called Friday’s ruling a long-standing delay in what had become an overly broad application of transformative fair use of copyright. “The decision helps to vindicate the rights of photographers who run the risk of their works being misappropriated for commercial use by famous artists under the guise of fair use,” he said.
The three-judge panel for the Second Circuit said its ruling should help clarify copyright law. He cautioned against judges making inherently subjective aesthetic judgments saying that they should not assume the role of an art critic and seek to determine the intention or meaning of the works in question.
He repeatedly compared copyright issues to what happens when books are made into movies. The often mentioned movie is quite different from the book, but still retains copyright obligations.
The Court of Appeals also said that the unique nature of Warhol’s art should not influence whether the artwork is transformative enough to be considered a fair use of a copyright, a legal term that would free an artist from paying. license fees for the raw material on which it is based. on.
“We feel compelled to clarify that it is completely irrelevant to this analysis that each work in the Prince series is immediately recognizable as Warhol,” the Court of Appeals said. Entertaining that logic would inevitably create a celebrity plagiarism privilege, the more established the artist and the more distinctive that artist’s style, the more leeway the artist would have to steal the creative labors of others.
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