Check out this article:
Ryan O'Neal, the Hollywood actor, has won a long and bitter legal battle over ownership of an Andy Warhol portrait of his late lover Farrah Fawcett.
A jury in Los Angeles decided that the painting, worth millions of dollars, belongs to O'Neal rather than the University of Texas, to which Fawcett bequeathed her art collection when she died of cancer in 2009 aged 62.
In a three week trial O'Neal, 72, the star of Love Story, gave emotional evidence in which he was forced to discuss how in 1997 Fawcett caught him in bed with a 25-year-old woman, which left Fawcett feeling "pitful and disgraced".
At one point Jaclyn Smith, Fawcett's co-star in the TV series Charlie's Angels, broke down in tears outside court after attending to support O'Neal.
The 40-inch by 40-inch silkscreen on canvas portrait at the centre of the dispute was one of two made by Warhol in 1980. After the actress died the university, her almer mater, received one of them.
University officials then discovered that the other portrait was in O'Neal's home in Malibu, California. It was clearly visible haning above his bed in a reality television show he filmed there.
O'Neal claimed that Warhol, who he had known since the 1960s, gave one painting each to Fawcett and himself, and that the university was pursuing both out of simple greed.
In the witness box he told the jury of six men and six women that he talked to the painting. He said: "I talk to it. I talk to her. It's her presence in my life and her son's life. We lost her. It would seem a crime to lose it."
The court heard that O'Neal and Fawcett were in a relationship for 30 years but never married, and had separate homes.
One of the Warhols hung in O'Neal's Malibu home until the 1997 incident in which he was caught with a younger woman. The following year, according to O'Neal, his younger companion felt "uncomfortable with Farrah staring at her,” so he gave the portrait to Fawcett to look after at her home.
A jury in Los Angeles decided that the painting, worth millions of dollars, belongs to O'Neal rather than the University of Texas, to which Fawcett bequeathed her art collection when she died of cancer in 2009 aged 62.
In a three week trial O'Neal, 72, the star of Love Story, gave emotional evidence in which he was forced to discuss how in 1997 Fawcett caught him in bed with a 25-year-old woman, which left Fawcett feeling "pitful and disgraced".
At one point Jaclyn Smith, Fawcett's co-star in the TV series Charlie's Angels, broke down in tears outside court after attending to support O'Neal.
The 40-inch by 40-inch silkscreen on canvas portrait at the centre of the dispute was one of two made by Warhol in 1980. After the actress died the university, her almer mater, received one of them.
University officials then discovered that the other portrait was in O'Neal's home in Malibu, California. It was clearly visible haning above his bed in a reality television show he filmed there.
O'Neal claimed that Warhol, who he had known since the 1960s, gave one painting each to Fawcett and himself, and that the university was pursuing both out of simple greed.
In the witness box he told the jury of six men and six women that he talked to the painting. He said: "I talk to it. I talk to her. It's her presence in my life and her son's life. We lost her. It would seem a crime to lose it."
The court heard that O'Neal and Fawcett were in a relationship for 30 years but never married, and had separate homes.
One of the Warhols hung in O'Neal's Malibu home until the 1997 incident in which he was caught with a younger woman. The following year, according to O'Neal, his younger companion felt "uncomfortable with Farrah staring at her,” so he gave the portrait to Fawcett to look after at her home.
RSS Feed