Considerations Of Copyright And First Amendment Rights In Appropriation Art

Case study of The Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith litigation.

There is a consensus that Andy Warhol originated the saying, "Art is anything you can get away with." However, further research shows that Warhol may have borrowed that quote from Canada's media theory philosopher Marshall McLuhan.

This year, the United States Supreme Court will address the question, as some may be tempted to say, of exactly what Andy Warhol can get away with when it decides whether Warhol's use of Lynn Goldsmith's photograph of the American singer-songwriter Prince Rogers Nelson (Prince) in his silkscreen Prince Series was transformative and therefore not an infringement on Goldsmith's copyright. More sinister potential implications of this forthcoming decision of the High Court are (1) who should decide on the merits and meaning of works of art, and (2) what prior restraints on artistic speech are the courts now comfortable with?