Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-869_87ad.pdf
Page Number: 86

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

35 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

ing—to what the borrower has made out of existing materi-
als.  That inquiry recognizes the value in using existing ma-
terials to fashion something new.  And so too, this Court— 
from  Justice  Story’s  time  to  two  Terms  ago—has  known 
that it is through such iterative processes that knowledge 
accumulates and art flourishes.  But not anymore.  The ma-
jority’s decision is no “continuation” of “existing copyright 
law.”  Ante,  at  37.  In  declining  to  acknowledge  the  im-
portance  of  transformative  copying,  the  Court  today,  and 
for the first time, turns its back on how creativity works. 

III 
And  the  workings  of  creativity  bring  us  back  to  Andy
Warhol.  For Warhol, as this Court noted in Google, is the 
very embodiment of transformative copying.  He is proof of 
concept—that  an  artist  working  from  a  model  can  create 
important new expression.  Or said more strongly, that ap-
propriations can help bring great art into being.  Warhol is 
a towering figure in modern art not despite but because of 
his use of source materials.  His work—whether Soup Cans
and Brillo Boxes or Marilyn and Prince—turned something 
not his into something all his own.  Except that it also be-
came all of ours, because his work today occupies a signifi-
cant place not only in our museums but in our wider artistic 
culture.  And if the majority somehow cannot see it—well,
that’s what evidentiary records are for.  The one in this case 
contained  undisputed  testimony,  and  lots  of  it,  that  War-
hol’s Prince series conveyed a fundamentally different idea, 
in a fundamentally different artistic style, than the photo 
he started from.  That is not the end of the fair-use inquiry.
The test, recall, has four parts, with one focusing squarely 
on Goldsmith’s interests.  But factor 1 is supposed to meas-
ure  what  Warhol  has  done.  Did  his  “new  work”  “add[ ]
something new, with a further purpose or different charac-
ter”?  Campbell, 510 U. S., at 579.  Did it “alter[ ] the first
with new expression, meaning, or message”?  Ibid.  It did,