US Supreme Court Rules Andy Warhol Prints Violated Photographer’s Image Rights
Judges at the United States Supreme Court have recently ruled in favor of photographer Lynn Goldsmith, agreeing that her image of the late musician Prince, which was used for a series of silkscreen prints by pop artist Andy Warhol, had its copyright violated.
Voting 7-2, the court explained that Goldsmith’s photographs did not fall under “fair use” in copyright law. This seminal decision is likely to set a precedent and have a long-term impact on how creatives decide to sample existing material for future works.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor determined that Warhol’s prints lacked a “substantially different commercial purpose” from the original pictures captured by Goldsmith, which were first featured in Newsweek and Vanity Fair magazines.
According to WWD, the terms of the limited license granted to Vanity Fair allowed for the image to be used as an “artist reference for an illustration” for a “one-time” scenario only. This led to the first silkscreen artwork created by Warhol that appeared in the November 1984 issue.
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Goldsmith was only alerted to the famed artist’s Prince Series when a different image from the collection popped up on the cover of a special edition of the magazine as a tribute to the late singer following his passing in 2016.
At the time, Vanity Fair’s parent company, Condé Nast, did not credit or compensate the photographer for reusing the image in its magazine but only paid the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts an estimated US$10,000.
Goldsmith said she was “thrilled” by the Supreme Court’s decision, which would benefit photographers and artists who “make a living by licensing their art.” She hopes the ruling will be a lesson that individuals should “not shy away” from speaking out when their rights are violated.
[via WWD and BBC, cover image via Marion Meyer | Dreamstime.com]
