Don’t invite Larry Clark and Peter Brant to the same Christmas party.
Clark, 70 — the director of “Kids,” “Ken Park” and “Marfa Girl” — has vowed to throw a drink in the face of the polo-playing publisher and art collector because of a deal that went bad over a $1 million painting by Cady Noland.
In a Nov. 19 e-mail that was copied to dozens of friends, Cark wrote, “Dear Peter, F— off . . . l wouldn’t sell you the Cady Noland piece I owned for 1 million dollars or 76 million or 124 million . . . I just sold it yesterday to a friend who will never put it up for auction where billionaires like you can trade it back and forth.”
The screed also referred to “obscene scumbags like you and all the kool-aid drinking greedy ugly immoral hedge fund auction house zombies.”
Clark indicated in other e-mails that Brant, 66, had agreed to buy the painting, but then had failed to pay for it in a timely fashion, costing Clark a $50,000 non-refundable deposit he had put down on a $350,000 collection of canes, one of which had belonged to P.T. Barnum.
“He never mentioned canes to me,” Brant told me Wednesday. “I told him I would buy the painting. I told him to send me an invoice and I would pay him within 14 days. He never called and said, ‘Could you speed it up?’ ”
Brant, who said “I love Larry’s work,” added, “I can’t explain this. It’s certainly not normal. I think he was frightened and upset because he was scheduled to go into the hospital for surgery on his neck. I’m really sorry it happened and I certainly wish him all the best.”
The painting was sold to fellow painter Richard Prince. Clark had the surgery and is recuperating in his loft downtown, having put the finishing touches on what he calls his movie masterpiece, “The Smell of Us,” which he filmed in Paris with a French-speaking cast.