Supreme Court to review dispute involving Andy Warhol’s ‘Prince Series’

The Supreme Court announced Monday it will weigh a case involving copyright laws and Andy Warhol’s “Prince Series” depicting the late musician.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts asked the justices to review a lower court decision in favor of Lynn Goldsmith, a photographer whose work Warhol used to make his colorful series of more than 15 images of Prince.

“At issue in this case is the legality of Andy Warhol’s Prince Series — a set of portraits that transformed a preexisting photograph of the musician Prince into a series of iconic works commenting on celebrity and consumerism,” the petition reads.

Ms. Goldsmith’s black-and-white photograph was altered by Warhol in 1984, when Vanity Fair commissioned him to create artwork for an article titled “Purpose Frame.” He then created 15 colorful images of the original photograph, though cropping it to not include the torso.

The magazine had licensed the photograph, taken three years earlier by Ms. Goldsmith, to Warhol. But years later after Prince died in 2016, Warhol’s version was reprinted in Condé Nast.

Ms. Goldsmith and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts went to court battling copyright laws and rights to the work, with Ms. Goldsmith looking to recover financially for the photograph being reprinted.

The U.S. District Court ruled in favor of Warhol, saying his art created a distinct message different from Ms. Goldsmith’s original work. But the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reversed the ruling.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts argues that work is “transformative” if it gives a new meaning to the preexisting work.

But Ms. Goldsmith’s legal team charged that Warhol’s work did not “add something new” to her photograph in her court filing, having urged the justices not to review the 2nd Circuit’s decision.