The New York Times’s Styles section can’t get enough of the Brant divorce. Here’s the art-related piece of the sad conflict:
By the time Brant v. Brant goes to trial on Sept. 20, the two sides will have generated more than 12,000 pages of public divorce documents (with thousands more sealed), paid millions of dollars in lawyers fees and fractured an already delicate cadre of family and friends forced to take sides.
Among their neighbors in Greenwich, the enclave of hedge fund managers and Connecticut bluebloods, the reaction to the Brants’ nasty dispute is largely one of witnessing a car wreck they want to move quickly past.
At the most basic level, this has turned into a case of “he said, she said,” with charges ranging from infidelity to rampant drug use. To complicate matters, Mr. Brant, whose estimated net worth is near $500 million, did not sign a prenuptial agreement. […] More often, though, the couple fought over objects. Ms. Seymour claimed in a motion filed on May 7, 2009, that Mr. Brant took 44 paintings by Warhol, a chandelier from her dressing room and drawings by Basquiat that she kept in her bathroom.
Mr. Brant said Ms. Seymour took some Warhol paintings of her own, including a few of the “Last Supper” series, according to a motion filed four days later. At the hearing on Aug. 6, Ms. Seymour’s lawyer wanted to know what Mr. Brant did with some jewels lent to a Parisian art show. Mr. Brant’s lawyer countered: What did Ms. Seymour do with his client’s watches?
Portraits of a Marriage (New York Times)
