Warhol Fair Use Ruling Reframes Appropriation Art Legal Fights

Artist Richard Prince, like Andy Warhol, has won and lost fair use decisions. Attorneys aren’t entirely sure how much harder those fights will become in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark Warhol ruling.

One week before the high court found a Vanity Fair cover featuring Warhol’s work didn’t transform Lynn Goldsmith’s photo of the musician Prince, Richard Prince took a district court loss over a museum exhibit featuring photos and comments culled from Instagram. It all comes 10 years after the appropriation artist set a “high water mark” in Second Circuit precedent involving his alterations of a series of ...