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32  ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR VISUAL ARTS, INC. 

v. GOLDSMITH 
Opinion of the Court 

the user (or the subjective interpretation of a court) deter-
mine the purpose of the use.  But the meaning of a second-
ary work, as reasonably can be perceived, should be consid-
ered  to  the  extent  necessary  to  determine  whether  the 
purpose of the use is distinct from the original, for instance,
because the use comments on, criticizes, or provides other-
wise  unavailable  information  about  the  original,  see,  e.g., 
Authors Guild, 804 F. 3d, at 215–216. 

2 
The District Court determined that “[t]he Prince Series
works  can  reasonably  be  perceived  to  have  transformed 
Prince  from  a  vulnerable,  uncomfortable  person  to  an
iconic, larger-than-life figure.”  382 F. Supp. 3d, at 326.  To 
make that determination, the District Court relied, in part,
on testimony by Goldsmith that her photographs of Prince 
show that he “is ‘not a comfortable person’ and that he is ‘a
vulnerable  human  being.’ ”    Ibid.   An  expert  on  Warhol,
meanwhile,  testified  that  the  Prince  Series  works  depict
“Prince as a kind of icon or totem of something,” a “mask-
like simulacrum of his actual existence.”  1 App. 249, 257.

The  Court  of  Appeals  noted,  correctly,  that  “whether  a 
work is transformative cannot turn merely on the stated or 
perceived intent of the artist or the meaning or impression
that a critic—or for that matter, a judge—draws from the 
work.”    11  F. 4th,  at  41.    “[O]therwise,  the  law  may  well 

—————— 
Critical History 287 (S. Madoff ed. 1997), with R. Hughes, The Shock of 
the  New  346–351  (2d  ed.  1991).    Whatever  the  contribution  of  Orange 
Prince, Goldsmith’s photograph is part of that contribution.  A court need 
not, indeed should not, assess the relative worth of two works to decide 
a claim of fair use.  Otherwise, “some works of genius would be sure to 
miss appreciation,” and, “[a]t the other end, copyright would be denied 
to  [works]  which  appealed  to  a  public  less  educated  than  the  judge.” 
Bleistein, 188 U. S., at 251–252 (Holmes,  J.).  That Goldsmith’s photo-
graph “had [its] worth and [its] success is sufficiently shown by the desire 
to reproduce [it] without regard to [her] rights.”  Id., at 252.