On a recent visit to San Francisco’s once nitty gritty Mission district, we paid a visit to the studio of Clark Sorensen, a ceramicist known for his outrageous glazed and high-fired floral urinals. Interestingly, Sorensen was raised as a Mormon in Utah (and once proselytized for the Latter Day Saints in France) but found himself as a pinko leftist queer in San Francisco where he came to his senses, and he has recently let his politics creep into his work. In addition to producing some highly unusual urinals (ever tinkle on a cala lilly?), he also has a series titled Down the Drain: The Legacy of George W. Bush — a fitting urinary tribute to those eight lousy years. There’s no telling what his next series will be devoted to, but may we kindly suggest the addition of hysteria-monger and kooky gold shiller Glenn Beck.

Take that, Dubya!

It must be summer, because the artsy jet-set and their Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses have materialized in abundance on the Greek Isle of Hydra, like the wild capers that grow from the cracks all over the island’s stone stairways. This past week’s super-event was the summer show at the Hydra Workshop, a waterfront art space that puts together an annual exhibit inspired by the collection of London-based art patron Pauline Karpidas, who flew in le tout New York (and demi-Dallas) for this year’s event. Co-curated by mega-gallerist Sadie Coles, the young artist featured this year was “bad boy” New York artiste Nate Lowman, who was in attendance with non other than petite amie Mary-Kate Olsen. (Coles’ hubby, fashion photographer Juergen Teller was also there — with nary a Marc Jacobs model in sight.)

The art this year was all about being self-referential: silk-screened portraits à-la-Warhol featured all the friends-of-Lowman crowding the Hydra waterfront (and saving everyone the trouble of having to look in the mirror). Many of the images were based on photographs snapped by John Shand-kydd (cousin-by-marriage to Diana Spencer), who, to keep things really meta, was also there, snapping away at the proceedings.

For more on this little fiesta, check out Rachel Chandler’s (self-referential) report at The Moment.

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Before le deluge.

The show packed the crowds into the steamy gallery – some of them were even decked out in trousers. Fancy!

Here the artiste, sporting of-the-moment asymmetrical ‘do, confers with girlfriend/actress/grande coffee sipper Mary-Kate Olsen – holding a Diet Coke. (Loved your work in The Wackness, M-K! ) To the right, looking slightly dazed: Swedish photographer Hanna Liden.

“Do your balls hang low, do they wobble to and fro…?”

Lowman’s portrait of Pauline Karpidas.

The real deal.

Lowman, right, does yoga stretches while enjoying some chit chat with smokin’ sculptor U.B. Morgan. In the background, M-K holds court with Herr Juergen in front of gyro advertising.

Pandemonium was unleashed when this young lady tried to parallel park her donkey, almost mowing down the artiste. Quelle horreur!

Once upon a time, in our youth, we were asked to write for a companion guide to a famous novel by Dan Brown. We visited many locations in the book and wrote with some authority (being versed in art conservation matters) about the restoration of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper in Milan. But we wrote from a distance about the Caravaggio holdings at the Louvre.

Our challenge was to figure out which painting in the Grand Gallerie could have been yanked off the wall during a key murder scene. We went for the fabulous Death of the Virgin (and luckily, so did the movie-makers, who turned the novel into a Tom Hanks romp, complete with straightened hair). But having just been to Paris to visit said gallery in person, we think that we may have made a mistake…

…because Death of the Virgin is a tad large for one person to hoist.

In the meantime, we passed the madness that surrounds THE Italian painting of all time: La Mona Lisa. It seems to be behind more layers of glass, Plexiglas, barbed wire and concrete than on our last visit (not exactly an intimate experience with Leonardo). But the Louvre does allow photography, giving each visitor the briefest instant to record the sublime experience digitally. It reminded us of the Pope’s 2005 funeral, when the peak moment for those lucky enough to wave goodbye to JP2 consisted of a split-second CLICK photo op.

I think I may have someone’s elbow permanently wedged up my nose. Send help.

Seriously.

Who cares about the rest of the gallery when there’s a Mona Lisa to be photographed?

As close as we got.

Anyway, back to the Baroque paintings…we regretted not having chosen Caravaggio’s much more modestly scaled The Fortune Teller as the key work in the opening scene of that Code book.

Oh well! A la prochaine fois!

Meanwhile…at the Palais Royal…

Daniel Buren’s subtle echo of the colonnade of the Palais Royale is getting a colorful facelift. While the water elements get upgraded and the artist’s stripey, black-and-white columns get scrubbed, the public can peek through technicolor panes of glass as the work carries on in the “cour d’honneur” courtyard. How nice when a contemporary art installation is classified as a “monument historique!” (Our own favorite moment for the columned courtyard? The final-reel shootout between bad guy Walter Matthau and good guys Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in Stanley Donan’s thriller Charade, 1961. “I had to kill them, Mrs. Lampert!“)

Palais Royal in orange…

…in blue…

…and red.

Q: What’s better than SUPERTITLES at the opera?
A: REALLY BIG WALL TEXT REALLY HIGH UP at an art museum!

We loved seeing the exhaustive (and exhausting) Kandinsky retrospective at the Beaubourg, a.k.a. Centre Georges Pompidou: the bold splotches of color, the whimsical shapes, all that kinetic motion from the peripatetic 20th-century master whose career took him from the Blue Rider through the Bauhaus. The only thing that left us puzzled was the wall text, which was writ LARGE and placed WAAAY up the wall. I suppose it’s so that even if visitors are stacked five-deep and can’t see the art, they can at least read the name of the painting over the tousled heads of fellow art-gawkers. Maybe some U.S. museums will catch on to this user-friendly trick. The Guggenheim will get its opportunity in September, when the show travels to New York.

Calder at the Pompidou is up through July 20; Kandinsky, through Aug. 10.

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The Pompidou: Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano’s 1977 inside-out masterpiece.

Both big shows are up on the 6-eme…just keep climbing…

The building has one of the most fab views of Paris.

The view of Paree competes with the art where it leaks into the Pompidou’s galleries.

Art? Cityscape? Why, I’ll have both!

Kandinsky. With SUPERTITLES!

Kids love Calder because he was one of them.

Oh, by the way, if you haven’t seen it yet, on permanent display in its own pavilion near all the buskers and picnicking college students in the Place Beaubourg is Brancusi’s studio. And Renzo’s Piano’s reimagining of the sculptor’s environment is even better than the original: it’s got glass walls!

Brancusi was so in love with the harmony of his own permanent installation that when he sold a sculpture, he would replace it with a plaster cast. (See a 360-degree view of the whole studio here.)

After the show, a visit to the Café Beaubourg is in order – it is our favorite place in the area for beautiful people-watching ops.

It is best known for the concrete interieurs tres chic which put Philippe Starck on the map of design-lovers back in 1980. Keep the Gauloises outside, please; they interfere with the delicate — and expensive — nuances of the cordon bleu.

Take one dead shark. Add a submerged coffin. Throw in a Jeff Koons-designed yacht. What do you have? A Matthew Barney extravaganza on the Greek Isle of Hydra, a renowned, car-free artsy fartsy hideout where everyone who is anyone goes everywhere by foot or burro. Hosted by collector/industrialist/Koons yacht owner Dakis Joannou, the performance/party/shark roast combined various events into one hyperreal Mediterranean spectacle.

The first installation was in a former slaughterhouse on Hydra’s Mandraki Bay, where Barney and painter-of-the-minute Elizabeth Peyton collaborated on a little event called Blood of Two, sponsored by the Athens-based Deste Foundation Center for Contemporary Art. Sadly, it did not involve fileting Björk. But it did involve getting up at dawn to watch a bunch of local workers dredge up a glass coffin from the Aegean that contained a Peyton-painted portrait of Barney. (So meta!) After the ceremonial lifting, said coffin/vitrine — very Jules Verne — was carried along a rocky path to the slaughterhouse, where the artsy jet set could admire its contents. Naturally, the Barney/Peyton team filmed the whole parade, which mimics a local Easter event in which an icon is carried into the sea and out again. (So culturally relevant!)

Accompanying the procession? One shark, dead, to be sacrificed to the ravenous culture vultures at an evening reception. This consisted of about 500 attendees sitting at the longest table we’ve ever seen (seriously, you couldn’t see the ends from the middle) all of whom diligently gnawed on the charred member of the phylum Chordata in the name of art. Naturally, it tasted like chicken. OK, not really. We didn’t eat the shark. There wasn’t enough to go around. But I’m sure it was delicious. Especially with a little tsatsiki on the side.

To read more on Matthew Barney’s shark party, check out The Moment, ArtForum and Art Observed.

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Scenic Hydra.

The area hadn’t seen this much excitement since the Peloponnesian War. Everyone was up at dawn to watch the coffin dredging!

The coffin arises from the deep.

Cue the media scrum.

The rocky walk from Hydra’s slaughterhouse to the annex-by-the-sea.

How cool would it have been if it had contained Damien Hirst? The mind reels.

As the sun set, it was time to retire from the slaughterhouse and get ready to party.

Here, Mr. Barney himself, casually clad in denim shirt, chit chats with one of the VVIP guests.

The shark: “I think we overcooked it. Get the A1.”

Getting ready to nosh, at the world’s longest table.

And nosh we did…into the wee hours.

All the while, Daki Jouannou’s yacht bobbed serenely in the harbor. Au Revoir, Mr. Jouannou! We look forward to nibbling on some other form of marine life next year!