Supreme Court To Hear Case Involving PA Native Andy Warhol, Prince

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Pittsburgh native Andy Warhol has been dead since 1987. Musician and film star Prince died in 2016. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving both of them.

The court, known more for legal opinions than artistic ones, will determine whether Warhol violated a photographer's copyright when he created a series of Prince silkscreens based on her work. Warhol used a preexisting photo to craft the silkscreens around the time Prince became a pop culture icon in the 1980s with the release of the "Purple Rain" movie and album.

Court documents in the case noted that Vanity Fair in 1984 commissioned Warhol, whose museum in Pittsburgh has attracted fans for decades, to create an image of Prince for an article titled "Purple Fame." Warhol re-imagined photographer Lynn Goldsmith's work for the image.

Following Prince's death, Vanity Fair published a tribute using one of the silkscreen images on the magazine's cover. The Warhol Foundation went to court seeking a declaration of copyright non-infringement; Goldsmith countersued claiming copyright infringement.

The Supreme Court will take up the case during its next term, which begins in the fall.

See the entire petition to the Supreme Court here.

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