Photo by Lynn Goldsmith of Prince, left; art taken from it by Andy Warhol, right. (Business Insider)

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the other day in a decision about art that could have a negative influence on classical architecture. The 7-2 decision in a case involving the art (I use the term out of politeness) of Andy Warhol, considered the age-old question of when copying earlier art is by inspiration or merely theft, unprotected by copyright law.

Obviously the question is complicated, and the high court added to its complexity by minimizing the role of a copied work’s “transformational”  effect on the new work of art. The element of transformation is key to the “fair use” exception to copyright law’s ban on the use of prior artists’ work. According to the Art in America blog (artnews.com), “not only did the Court downgrade the importance of whether a new work is transformative, whether it “adds something new and important” (to use the Supreme Court’s words from a previous case). The Court also painted a bizarre picture of Warhol as an inconsequential artist.”

Andy Warhol was not an inconsequential artist, he was a bad artist. His unearned reputation as an artist has been a disaster for art everywhere, part and parcel of the decline of beauty’s role in its production. Warhol’s far from alone in his complicity, nor can he be blamed for successfully making a fools of an already foolish art establishment. But as Art in America writer Amy Adler states, “Nowhere in the majority opinion would you recognize Warhol as a once-radical artist, the one de Kooning drunkenly approached at a cocktail party to utter, ‘You’re a killer of art, you’re a killer of beauty.’”

Artist Willem de Kooning was right about Warhol. De Kooning, with his abstract expressionism, may not have been the artistic paragon who had any right to say it. But that does not lessen its truth. Andy Warhol was merely a commercial product, no more truly transformative of art in their copies as in the originals. Justice Kagan, in her dissent, said the majority had “reduced Warhol to an Instagram filter.” I am not sure exactly what that might mean, but I applaud the sentiment. Minimizing Warhol to any degree begins to grasp the elements of an important truth. If anything, Kagan did not go far enough. And if copying such art as that by Andy Warhol is made more difficult by the majority ruling, then it must be conceded that, however unintentionally, they are on the right track.

I noted in my opening line that the ruling may pose a problem for classical architecture, in that classicism is based on the classical orders, and each classical building owes a debt to the past, and more specifically to whomever among the ancients created the orders. In writing that line, I may have unintentionally heightened the anxiety of some readers. How this matter could ever be addressed legally, given that the original creator of the orders is unknown, is a knotty question. Classical architecture may never be targeted by the judicial system or its minions.

If Pennsylvania Station is ever rebuilt, it would be a direct copy of the original Penn Station, designed by architect Charles Follen McKim, who is dead, and whose heirs are hardly likely to protest a monumental work in his honor. He understood beauty.

Digital image of the Main Waiting Room of Penn Station. (ReThinkNYC)