Supreme Court to take up dispute over Andy Warhol images of Prince

The Supreme Court said Monday that it will referee a dispute involving pop artist Andy Warhol and a rock photographer who claimed Warhol violated her rights in creating images of Prince based on her photo.

The court will consider an issue that arises when a new work of art is based on an existing one: How different does the new work have to be to become something new, not simply an appropriation of someone else’s creation?

At the heart of the case is a picture of Prince, then a rising star, taken in 1981 by renowned photographer Lynn Goldsmith. She posed him against a white background after applying purple eyeshadow and lip gloss.

Three years later, Vanity Fair licensed the photo and asked Warhol to produce a series of 16 silkscreen prints based on it, which became a cover for an issue of the magazine. When one of the Warhol images was republished in a tribute issue, Goldsmith said it infringed her copyright, and the issue wound up in court.

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