Page:Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith.pdf/71

20 rids the term of most of its ordinary meaning. “Character” typically refers to a thing’s “main or essential nature[,] esp[ecially] as strongly marked and serving to distinguish.” Webster’s Third 376; see. The essential and distinctive nature of an artist’s use of a work commonly involves artistry—as it did here. See also Campbell, 510 U. S., at 582, 588–589 (discussing the expressive “character” of 2 Live Crew’s rap). So the term “character” makes significant everything the record contains—and everything everyone (save the majority) knows—about the differences in expression and meaning between Goldsmith’s photo and Warhol’s silkscreen.

Second, the majority significantly narrows §107(1)’s reference to “purpose” (thereby paralleling its constriction of “character”). It might be obvious to you that artists have artistic purposes. And surely it was obvious to the drafters of a law aiming to promote artistic (and other kinds of) creativity. But not to the majority, which again cares only about Warhol’s decision to license his art. Warhol’s purpose, the majority says, was just to “depict Prince in [a] magazine stor[y] about Prince” in exchange for money. The majority spurns all that mattered to the artist—evident on the face of his work—about “expression, meaning, [and] message.” Campbell, 510 U. S., at 579; Google, 593 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 24). That indifference to purposes beyond the commercial—for what an artist, most fundamentally, wants to communicate—finds no support in §107(1).