Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-869_87ad.pdf
Page Number: 53.0

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ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR VISUAL ARTS, INC. 
v. GOLDSMITH 
KAGAN, J., dissenting 

relevant here, Prince.  That’s how Warhol earned his con-
spicuous place in every college’s Art History 101.  So it may 
come as a surprise to see the majority describe the Prince
silkscreen  as  a  “modest  alteration[ ]”  of  Lynn  Goldsmith’s 
photograph—the  result  of  some  “crop[ping]”  and  “flat-
ten[ing]”—with the same “essential nature.”  Ante, at 8, 25, 
n. 14, 33 (emphasis deleted).  Or more generally, to observe
the majority’s lack of appreciation for the way his works dif-
fer in both aesthetics and message from the original tem-
plates.  In a recent decision, this Court used Warhol paint-
ings  as  the  perfect  exemplar  of  a  “copying  use  that  adds 
something new and important”—of a use that is “transform-
ative,” and thus points toward a finding of fair use.  Google 
LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., 593 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2021) 
(slip op., at 24–25).  That Court would have told this one to 
go back to school.

What is worse, that refresher course would apparently be
insufficient.  For  it  is  not  just  that  the  majority  does  not
realize how much Warhol added; it is that the majority does 
not care.  In adopting that posture of indifference, the ma-
jority does something novel (though in law, unlike in art, it
is rarely a good thing to be transformative).  Before today,
we assessed “the purpose and character” of a copier’s use by
asking the following question: Does the work “add[ ] some-
thing new, with a further purpose or different character, al-
tering the [original] with new expression, meaning, or mes-
sage”?  Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U. S. 569, 
579  (1994);  see  Google,  593  U. S.,  at  ___  (slip  op.,  at  24).
When it did so to a significant degree, we called the work 
“transformative” and held that the fair-use test’s first factor 
favored the copier (though other factors could outweigh that
one).  But today’s decision—all the majority’s protestations
notwithstanding—leaves  our  first-factor  inquiry  in  sham-
bles.  The majority holds that because Warhol licensed his 
work to a magazine—as Goldsmith sometimes also did—the
first factor goes against him.  See, e.g., ante, at 35.  It does